Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There is a predictable anxiety that surfaces whenever endurance refuses to bow. It disguises itself as counsel. It presents itself as prudence. It speaks the language of unity while trembling beneath the weight of competition. The renewed calls urging Atiku Abubakar to quit the race are not expressions of democratic refinement. They are symptoms of strategic discomfort, discomfort with a contender who refuses to evaporate on command. When a candidate cannot be ignored, some attempt to erase him rhetorically. When he cannot be easily defeated, they attempt to disqualify him morally. What is being marketed as advice is, in truth, apprehension amplified, the sound of calculation unsettled.
Democracy does not function on fatigue. It functions on consent, the living will of citizens. John Locke located legitimacy in the consent of the governed, not in the impatience of rivals. Jean Jacques Rousseau placed sovereignty in the people, not in corridors of elite irritation. John Stuart Mill warned against the tyranny of prevailing opinion, the pressure to silence what unsettles the dominant mood. None proposed an expiry clause for ambition. The Constitution limits tenure in office; it does not ration aspiration. To invent a political shelf life because arithmetic appears inconvenient is not philosophy. It is fear rebranded as doctrine, insecurity clothed in constitutional language.
History is merciless toward such fear. Abraham Lincoln lost repeatedly before preserving a fractured union. Winston Churchill was dismissed as outdated before becoming indispensable. Charles de Gaulle exited the stage only to return and steady France. Nelson Mandela endured decades before leading reconciliation. Endurance did not disqualify them. It clarified them. Democracy does not punish persistence; it tests substance, and substance survives impatience.
What unsettles the architects of withdrawal is not repetition but relevance. Atiku remains structurally viable, not symbolically present but operationally grounded. He retains cross regional networks forged over decades. He understands coalition arithmetic in a fragmented polity where alliances determine outcomes. He articulates economic restructuring with fluency at a time Nigerians are not debating ambition but survival. In Kano, traders recalculate prices as currency fluctuates and profits evaporate. In Ibadan, families stretch meals and still worry about tomorrow. In Port Harcourt, graduates refresh job portals that do not answer and question their future. In Lagos, transport fares outrun wages and dignity is negotiated daily. For these Nigerians, the issue is not how many times someone has contested. It is who understands markets, who can negotiate stability, who can restore confidence. In seasons of economic strain, experience is not excess. It is reassurance. And reassurance is oxygen.
Those urging withdrawal understand something they will not concede. Primaries are arithmetic, not amplification. Noise does not vote. Indignation does not vote. Panels do not vote. Delegates vote. Delegates measure alliances, structure, negotiation capacity and reach. Those who fear arithmetic often attempt to rewrite the rules before the numbers are counted. That is the psychology behind the pressure campaign. It seeks to win before the whistle. It emerges early, before mathematics assembles. It swells briefly, before organisation asserts itself. It confuses volume with inevitability and agitation with authority.
But structure has longer lungs than outrage.
These calls will flare. They will circulate. They will trend. And they will fade, ephemeral like baby laughter, bright but brief, expressive yet weightless. They lack institutional ballast. They lack structural stamina. They cannot survive the disciplined mathematics of internal party democracy. Democracy is not intimidated by agitation. It is resolved by ballots, silent, decisive, final.
Atiku Abubakar will contest because constitutional rights are not subject to rival veto. He will contest because resilience is not illegitimacy. He will contest because ambition in a republic is not rationed by discomfort or engineered impatience. He can emerge as the candidate of the ADC not through noise but through coalition engineering, quiet negotiation and delegate mobilisation built over time. Political outcomes are not determined by commentary. They are determined by structure, patient, deliberate, disciplined structure. In a season marked by economic fatigue and national uncertainty, Nigerians are searching not for spectacle but for steadiness. When hardship deepens, competence becomes magnetic. When instability spreads, endurance becomes reassuring. When uncertainty multiplies, experience becomes valuable currency.
In the end, the verdict will belong not to those who mistook noise for momentum, but to those who built structure. Politics is not theatre. It is arithmetic. It is not agitation. It is organisation. The calls for Atiku to quit may echo in cycles, but they cannot outlive structure, and they cannot outvote delegates. They are noisy. They are light. They are ephemeral. When the ballots are cast and the numbers are counted, it will not be whispers that decide. It will be will. And in a democracy, will always outweigh noise. Because history does not remember the noisy protest. It remembers the leader who endured and prevailed.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
