Aare Amerijoye DOT. B
Nigeria is no longer being governed. It is being punished. Under Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress, suffering has stopped being an accident of bad policy and has become a deliberate method of rule. Hunger is defended as reform. Poverty is reframed as discipline. Pain is preached as patriotism. This is not leadership. It is organised cruelty carried out with cold confidence and moral indifference.
The ruling elite now demand endurance from Nigerians for conditions they will never experience themselves. Fuel subsidy was removed without cushioning. The currency was destabilised without explanation. Prices exploded without restraint. Ordinary people were thrown into hardship and then lectured about patience from comfort and privilege. This is not shared sacrifice. It is economic violence imposed downward while those in power congratulate themselves for courage they do not possess.
In this landscape of calculated hardship stands Atiku Abubakar. Not as nostalgia. Not as sentiment. But as a living indictment of the lie that Nigeria had no alternative. Atiku represents memory in a country ruled by deliberate amnesia. Memory of leadership that debated policy before enforcing pain. Memory of governance that understood markets, institutions, and human consequences.
Every market stall, every transport fare, every unpaid salary is now evidence against this government. Traders sell less and pay more. Workers earn wages that evaporate before payday. Graduates roam the streets with certificates mocked by inflation. Families ration meals while officials defend suffering as reform. This is not reform. It is social demolition disguised as courage.
Across Nigeria, Atiku’s acceptance cuts across ethnic and regional lines because he does not govern by contempt. His traditional titles across the South, the North, and the Middle Belt are not ceremonial excesses. They are verdicts. They expose a truth the ruling elite cannot erase. Unity can be earned through respect. It cannot be imposed through punishment. Atiku listens. This government commands and crushes dissent.
This administration has perfected a dangerous logic. Break the people first. Silence them with propaganda. Blame the past. Blame history. Blame everyone except those in charge. Any criticism is dismissed as sabotage. Any comparison is labelled disloyalty. This is how failed governments survive. By criminalising memory and exhausting the poor.
Atiku’s politics exposes the intellectual emptiness of this order. As Waziri Adamawa, he understands that nations are governed by institutions rather than impulse. By planning rather than arrogance. By inclusion rather than exclusion. He understands federalism as justice, not as conference decoration. Where this government centralises pain, Atiku decentralises opportunity.
Plato warned that the greatest victory is self conquest. This government has failed even that basic test. It is trapped in arrogance, hostile to correction, and intoxicated by power. Atiku has endured defeat without bitterness and opposition without desperation. He seeks power not to avenge himself, but to rescue a country being deliberately driven into despair.
Martin Luther King Jr warned that societies must learn to live together or perish together as fools. Nigeria under APC is being driven rapidly toward that foolish end. Hunger divides. Resentment hardens. Propaganda replaces accountability. Atiku’s insistence on unity is not idealism. It is survival politics.
Karl Marx argued that the task is not to interpret the world endlessly, but to change it. This government interprets suffering daily while deepening it relentlessly. Atiku’s record in economic liberalisation, institutional reform, and national integration reveals a leader focused on outcomes rather than excuses. On systems rather than slogans.
This is why Atiku frightens the establishment. Not because he insults. But because he forces comparison. Between governance and punishment. Between reform and recklessness. Between leadership and cruelty. In a regime sustained by forgetfulness, Atiku Abubakar is dangerous because he insists Nigerians remember.
Nigeria is not broken by accident. It is broken by design. Hunger is now policy and silence is the expectation. The APC did not inherit failure. They perfected it. Atiku frightens them because he proves this suffering was optional. If this is reform, Nigerians must ask who it is designed to benefit.
Nigeria does not need a messiah. It needs competence with conscience. Against the wreckage created by the APC experiment, Atiku stands not as nostalgia but as necessity. Not as protest but as correction. History will not excuse this suffering. And it will be ruthless toward those who defended it and dared to call it reform.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
