Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There are moments in the life of a nation when a newspaper column stops being analysis and instead reveals itself as a psychological document. The essay by Sunday Dare, published in TheCable, is one such moment. It is not a calm engagement with facts or history; it is a reflex, an anxious reaction triggered by a comparison that hit too close to everyday reality.
This is even more revealing because Sunday Dare is not an independent commentator. He currently serves as Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Media and Public Communications in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a senior government position that makes him a key defender and spokesperson of the very administration he now attempts to shield through writing.
Dare did not write because Atiku Abubakar was wrong. He wrote because Atiku’s words sounded familiar. Nigerians recognised them instantly, and that recognition unsettled a government and its loyal defenders who depend more on controlling narratives than on measurable results.
The comparison that caused the outrage was neither extreme nor provocative. Atiku simply compared the lived conditions of Nigerians under the current civilian government with the remembered hardship of military rule. There was no praise for military uniforms, no admiration for decrees, no longing for authoritarian control. There was only comparison—one of the oldest democratic tools and the most uncomfortable mirror for failing governments. In a healthy democracy, such a comparison would be answered with evidence: statistics on wages, prices, security, jobs, and opportunity.
In today’s Nigeria, it produced hysteria. Comparison itself was treated as a crime. That response alone exposes the fragility of the present system.
There is a familiar saying, repeated so often it has become unquestioned truth, that the worst civilian government is better than the best military regime. It survives mainly because few people examine it closely. History, however, does not bow to slogans; it records outcomes. When Atiku says that the Tinubu government has fallen below even the harsh standards Nigerians associate with military rule, this cannot be dismissed as carelessness or ignorance. Atiku is not a distant critic.
He was part of the civilian struggle against military rule, lived under threat, narrowly escaped death, and lost police officers assigned to protect him. His democratic credentials were not earned in classrooms; they were shaped in dangerous circumstances. When such a person makes this judgment, it is not nostalgia for dictatorship. It is evidence, an indictment of a government that has kept democratic rituals while stripping democracy of real substance.
Strong governments welcome comparison. They invite scrutiny of prices, wages, security, and opportunity. Weak governments ban comparison because it breaks slogans and exposes the maths of suffering. Under the Tinubu administration, Nigerians now live by constant recalculation. Prices change between morning and night. Salaries arrive already destroyed by inflation. The naira weakens daily, losing value by the hour. Parents bargain over school fees as if negotiating ransom. Farmers abandon their land because insecurity follows fertiliser routes and the state is absent. Graduates are told that patience is policy, and hunger enforces it. This is not longing for dictatorship; it is the daily reality of a civilian system that has turned democracy into ceremony without compassion.
Unable to defend these realities, Dare invents an argument Atiku never made. Comparison is recast as praise; criticism is portrayed as endorsement. Armed with this false argument of his own creation, Dare attacks loudly and declares victory. This is not debate; it is performance, poor performance ,where noise replaces evidence and anger substitutes for reason. The tactic is clear: if results cannot be defended, invent motives; if policies fail, attack character.
At this point, Dare stops writing like a columnist and begins to resemble a trapped animal dressed in borrowed elegance,restless, anxious, darting sideways in the hope that speed will pass for substance. He does not confront the argument; he circles it, snapping at shadows and mistaking movement for danger. He hears comparison and panics. He sees Atiku’s name and freezes. His writing is not confident; it is frantic, like something caught between the glare of reality and the cover of propaganda, unsure whether to run, pretend nothing is wrong, or lash out blindly. Panic has become Dare’s writing style.
The essay finally collapses when Dare casually throws in a medical insult—“senile dementia.” That moment marks the exact point where argument leaves the room. Political disagreement is not a disease; criticism of policy is not mental illness. When a writer abandons facts for diagnosis and reasoning for insult, he admits defeat. This is not bravery; it is cowardice with a byline. When evidence fails him, he resorts to abuse; when governance collapses, he shouts at Atiku’s shadow. It is self-parody disguised as commentary.
Dare then attempts to summon the dead of the military era as moral weapons against present complaints. This is not respect; it is moral blackmail. Nigerians resisted dictatorship to secure accountability, not to give civilian governments permanent immunity from criticism. Democracy does not become good by reminding people that the past was worse. That attitude only breeds arrogance. To use memory as a shield against present suffering is to betray the struggle one claims to honour.
When the noise is removed, Dare’s argument rests on four claims: that Atiku praised military rule, insulted democratic sacrifice, spoke out of electoral bitterness, and showed personal decline. Each claim collapses easily. Atiku did not praise dictatorship; comparison is not endorsement. More importantly, his history disqualifies him from romanticising military rule, given his resistance and the cost he paid. He did not insult democracy; democracy is judged by outcomes, not ceremonies. A civilian government that delivers mass hunger, currency collapse, and social despair has failed in substance, regardless of procedure. And the medical insult answers itself: when arguments end, insults begin.
Here Dare reaches for his weakest cliché,the “serial loser” label,and in doing so reveals a deep misunderstanding of how history works. Electoral loss is not a measure of moral worth. If it were, Abraham Lincoln, who lost many elections before becoming president, would not exist in history. Winston Churchill would have remained irrelevant after years in political exile before leading Britain through war. Nelson Mandela would have been dismissed long before his release from prison. Mahatma Gandhi never won elections; he won a nation’s conscience. Loss did not weaken these men; it sharpened them. To claim that Atiku’s repeated submission to democratic judgment proves decline is to misunderstand democracy. Only dictators believe one loss should silence a person forever.
The claim of decline fails completely. Atiku Abubakar is not seeking relevance or validation. He is not driven by frustration or personal emptiness. By every serious standard, business, governance, family, global standing, and achievement—he is already fulfilled. Power does not define him; it simply gives him a wider platform to serve. This is what separates him from many in Nigerian politics today. Atiku does not seek office to fix a broken private life, but to devote a complete one to public service. He asks nothing from Nigeria except the chance to repair it, to rebuild institutions, stabilise the economy, restore dignity to governance, and leave the country better organised than he found it. There is no decline here, only resolve; no bitterness, only responsibility; no desperation, only disciplined faith that Nigeria can be better governed.
Nothing in this argument, and nothing in Atiku Abubakar’s statement, suggests or supports the idea that military rule is superior to civilian rule. Such an interpretation would be dishonest or deliberately obtuse. Military rule remains a denial of freedom, accountability, and constitutional order. Its history of repression and abuse is undisputed and is not being defended here.
What is being stated,clearly and deliberately, is far more serious: that the material conditions produced by the current civilian administration under Bola Ahmed Tinubu have fallen below even the harsh standards Nigerians remember from military times. This is not a philosophical defence of authoritarianism; it is a factual judgment about suffering. It is not a debate about systems; it is a verdict on results.
Military regimes were harsh, but their cruelty was direct and visible. What Nigerians face today is different and, in many ways, worse: a civilian government that oversees hunger, currency collapse, confused policy, and widespread despair, while insisting, through propaganda and moral pressure, that citizens must endure silently because elections were held. This is economic violence carried out under democratic language, and it explains why the pain feels deeper, more humiliating, and more suffocating.
The point, therefore, is not that military rule was better. The point is that this civilian government has performed so badly that it has stripped democracy of its moral authority. When people cannot eat, plan, save, travel safely, or trust institutions, democracy stops feeling like freedom and starts feeling like neglect. That is the tragedy being described—not a desire for uniforms, but sorrow for a democracy emptied of meaning.
Because Nigeria is a democracy, this failure is unforgivable. Civilian governments are judged not only by how they gain power, but by how they use it. When they turn hardship into policy, shame suffering, and criminalise comparison, they invite the most serious democratic response: loss of legitimacy.
When legitimacy is lost, the solution is not dictatorship, chaos, or violence. The solution is democratic removal,the lawful, constitutional replacement of a government that has failed to protect the dignity, welfare, and future of its people. Nigerians are not being asked to reject democracy; they are being urged to save it by voting out a government that has turned civilian rule into organised impoverishment.
This is why comparison matters. It is not to praise military rule, but to show how far this administration has fallen. It is a warning, not an endorsement. It is a call for political change, not a return to authoritarianism.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Dare’s essay is what it avoids. There is no defence of inflation, no explanation for a collapsing currency, no engagement with energy poverty, insecurity, unemployment, or policy confusion. Instead, there is character attack. This is the oldest political trick: when performance cannot be defended, attack personality.
Dare is not alone. Under Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress, governance has become endurance theatre, staffed by anxious messengers constantly rushing to block one leak while several more burst open behind them. Pain is renamed reform; shock is sold as courage; citizens are told to clap while their lives deteriorate. Dissent is treated as betrayal; comparison is forbidden; hunger is moralised. Noise is mistaken for nourishment. It never works.
Against this collapse stands Atiku Abubakar, not as a miracle worker, but as a democratic constant: a civilian reformer shaped by military oppression; a constitutional leader who governed without decrees; a thoughtful federalist; a moderniser who understands markets; a bridge across Nigeria’s divisions. He is careful, institutional, economically informed, historically grounded, and democratically disciplined, arguably the most experienced and coherent statesman in Nigeria today. His criticism of the current government is not reckless; it is rooted in history, supported by evidence, and driven by the visible suffering of Nigerians.
Dare’s essay was meant to silence comparison. Instead, it revealed fear—the fear that Nigerians are measuring again: prices against income, promises against reality, civilian rule against its own claims. For a government that survives on storytelling rather than sustenance, memory is dangerous and comparison deadly. No amount of noise will defeat arithmetic. No slogan will erase lived experience. And no panic-filled essay will turn hunger into hope.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director-General,
The Narrative Force
