Proverbs 14:11
NIGERIA IS BLEEDING: THE APC MUST GO
A Nation Betrayed, A People Awakened, A Future Worth Fighting For
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Prologue: The Day Hope Died on a Stadium Stage
There is a moment every Nigerian remembers.
May 29, 2023. Eagle Square, Abuja. The sun blazed overhead, the crowd buzzed with cautious hope. A new president stood at the podium, inheriting a wounded but breathing nation. Millions across 36 states and the FCT leaned forward, hearts suspended between yesterday’s pain and tomorrow’s promise. Children sat on their fathers’ shoulders. Market women paused their trade to watch on shared phones. Old men in northern villages pressed their ears to radios. All of Nigeria listened.
Then came four words that detonated a bomb beneath every Nigerian household.
“Fuel subsidy is gone.”
No warning. No transition plan. No safety net. No mercy. Just four words, delivered with the casual confidence of a man who would never personally feel their consequences.
Within 48 hours, petrol queues stretched for kilometres. Within weeks, transport fares doubled. Within months, the price of rice, beans, garri and palm oil had climbed so savagely that mothers across Nigeria began making an impossible daily calculation: which meal do we skip today?
That is how “Renewed Hope” was born. And that is how it died, on the same day, in the same breath.
The Numbers That Haunt Every Nigerian Home
Let us not trade in emotion alone. Let us trade in facts, because the facts are damning enough.
Food inflation hit 40.9 percent in June 2024, a record. The price of beans rose 282 percent compared to the same period in 2023. Local rice climbed 153 percent in the same timeframe. These are not abstract statistics. They are the difference between a child going to school with a full stomach or an empty one.
Nigeria is grappling with its worst cost of living crisis in nearly 30 years.
The Naira, once trading at ₦450 to the dollar, crashed beyond ₦1,700. Debt servicing in the 2025 budget ballooned to over ₦16 trillion, exceeding the combined allocations for defence, education, infrastructure, and health. Nigeria’s national debt crossed $100 billion. And what did the ordinary citizen receive in return? A one-time cash transfer of ₦25,000, approximately $15, that the government promised to 15 million Nigerians but by December 2023 had reached only 1.7 million.
Between October and December 2024, 25.1 million people experienced acute food insecurity even at the peak of the harvest season. That number was projected to rise to 33.1 million people facing high levels of acute food insecurity by mid-2025, an alarming rise of seven million from the same period the year before.
Now as we move through 2026, the picture has not improved. An estimated 31.8 million Nigerians are expected to face acute food insecurity in 2026. This means millions of households may regularly skip meals, reduce food quality, or go days without eating. Hunger in Nigeria is no longer seasonal or limited to one region; it is a daily reality for families in both urban and rural communities.
A record near-35 million Nigerians are facing food insecurity, driven by conflict, climate shocks, displacement and the systemic collapse of local food systems.
35 million Nigerians facing hunger. In a country that sits on some of the most fertile land on the African continent. In a country that earned trillions from oil for decades. In a country whose president travels by presidential jet to medical appointments in Europe while citizens cannot afford paracetamol.
This is not misfortune. This is governance failure. Deliberate, documented, and unforgivable.
Faces Behind the Figures
Statistics do not bleed. People do. So let us speak of people.
In December 2024, 67 people died in stampedes across three Nigerian cities as they scrambled to get food at different charity events. Auwal Musa, Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, attributed the stampedes to the alarming state of hunger and desperation due to bad governance and rising poverty levels.
Read that again. Not killed by Boko Haram. Not killed by bandits. Killed in a stampede, fighting for a bag of rice at a charity event. In the most populous nation on the African continent. In the year 2024. Under a president who calls his agenda “Renewed Hope.”
Across the nation, families battled soaring prices, shrinking incomes, and a cost of living crisis that pushed millions to the brink. Inflation continued its relentless climb. The Naira weakened further. Jobs disappeared. Small businesses are collapsing, children are being withdrawn from schools, households are shrinking their diets, and communities are sliding deeper into poverty.
Think of Mama Chidinma in Onitsha, who ran a small provisions shop for 14 years, who watched her buying power collapse as the Naira fell, who could no longer restock her shelves because wholesale prices had tripled, who had to pull her youngest child from school because she could not pay the fees. She did not vote for hardship. She voted for hope.
Think of Mallam Bello in Gusau, a farmer who planted maize in the dry season, who watched floods destroy his harvest, whose fertilizer cost four times what it cost two years ago, who now sleeps with one eye open because bandits have made his farmland a no-go zone after dark. He did not vote for fear. He voted for protection.
Think of Emeka in Port Harcourt, a 26-year-old graduate with a second class upper in engineering, who has sent out 200 job applications in 18 months and received three interviews and zero offers, who watches his mates japa to Canada and the UK one by one, who asks himself every morning whether Nigeria wants him at all. He did not vote for abandonment. He voted for a future.
According to the World Bank, about 129 million Nigerians, 59 percent of the population, live in poverty. That is not a statistic. That is a national emergency wearing a political mask.
The Arrogance of the Comfortable
In announcing the removal of fuel subsidies, President Tinubu promised that the funds saved would be redirected to public infrastructure and improving people’s lives. More than a year later, there has been no transparency regarding how much money has been saved or how it is being utilised. Meanwhile, the government’s spending priorities, such as the purchase of a presidential jet and plans for a luxury yacht, have sparked public outrage, painting a troubling picture of the public enduring significant hardship while government officials thrive at their expense.
Instead of offering relief, government policies often intensified the suffering. Higher taxes, rising bank charges, and inconsistent economic directives created confusion for businesses and despair for citizens. The so-called “reforms” became a burden carried almost entirely by the poor, while those in power remained insulated from the consequences of their decisions.
And when the APC is confronted with the wreckage, what is their response? Blame. The party described resistance to the reforms as unpatriotic and self-serving, saying a section of the political class chose to weaponise hardship, amplify fear and market Nigeria as a failed state.
So there you have it. If you are hungry, you are unpatriotic. If you are suffering, you are a saboteur. If you dare to say “enough,” you are the enemy of the state. This is the moral bankruptcy of a ruling party that has run out of ideas and defaulted to running on insults.
Even APC’s own National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, admitted publicly that the administration’s reforms have increased economic hardship for Nigerians. When the ruling party’s own spokesman confesses failure, no further verdict is required.
Nigeria Humiliated on the World Stage
Three years ago, Nigeria was the undisputed giant of Africa. Today, it is being bypassed, sidelined and treated as an afterthought by the international community.
The United States government hosted the Presidents of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal for high-level commercial talks at the White House without extending the same invitation to Nigeria. ADC described Nigeria’s exclusion as a damning international indictment of the Tinubu administration’s sustained economic mismanagement, weak and incoherent diplomacy, and inability to project Nigeria’s strategic importance on the global stage.
Under this APC administration, once the acknowledged leader of the continent, Nigeria has become an afterthought. The truth is that APC has not only stalled our economic progress, it has stripped us of the opportunity to sit at the table where real decisions and real investments that could create jobs, boost growth and improve our economy, are being made.
Africa’s largest economy. The most populous nation on the continent. Left out of the room where the world does its business. This is the diplomatic dividend of three years of APC governance under Tinubu.
Blood Across the Map: Security Without Strategy
While Abuja debated macroeconomic theory, communities across Nigeria buried their dead.
Boko Haram and ISWAP still hold territory in the Northeast. In 2025, severe funding shortages forced the suspension of 150 WFP-supported nutrition clinics in Borno and Yobe, two states with some of the country’s highest hunger levels, placing 300,000 children at risk of wasting. Bandits and kidnappers operate with devastating confidence across the Northwest. The North Central, especially Benue State, bleeds from intercommunal violence and flooding simultaneously.
Ten years of APC. Two presidents. Trillions in security budgets. And yet, as of February 2026, ADC’s former National Chairman Ralph Nwosu warned that the Tinubu administration is using state institutions to weaken opposition voices at a time when citizens are battling economic hardship, focusing more on political control than on solving the problems facing ordinary Nigerians.
The state is not protecting Nigerians. It is protecting itself.
Democracy Under Siege in 2026
Across all fronts, the economy, governance, security, and civic freedoms, one truth stands out: Nigeria is at a crossroads. The choices made in 2026 will determine whether the country continues down a path of hardship, repression, and inequality, or whether it rises to reclaim the promise of justice, dignity, and shared prosperity.
Nigeria’s scores on core democratic indicators such as freedom of expression and assembly rights have been regressing continuously over the past years. Governors, senators, and politicians continue to defect en masse into the ruling APC, not out of conviction but out of survival. Courts and institutions that should serve as checks on power are increasingly questioned for impartiality.
When Nigerians protested in August 2024, the government responded not with empathy but with teargas, live rounds, mass arrests, and treason charges against young citizens who dared to say “enough.” As one prominent opposition voice described it, the Tinubu administration governed for months without a functional budget while relying on propaganda and reckless borrowing, exposing the incompetence and policy bankruptcy at the heart of APC’s Renewed Hope agenda.
The Alternative Is Not a Wish. It Is a Movement.
Here is what the propaganda machinery of the APC does not want you to know.
The opposition is no longer fragmented. It is no longer weak. It is no longer wandering. The African Democratic Congress today stands as the backbone of a coalition built not on desperation but on determination. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Peter Obi. Grassroots movements from Lagos to Maiduguri. All converging under one banner with one message: Nigeria deserves better, and 2027 is when we take it back.
ADC has urged the government to prioritise food security, job creation, and economic recovery. It has called on Nigerians to hold leaders accountable through lawful and democratic means. This is not a party that campaigns on hate. It is a party that campaigns on results, on dignity, and on the radical idea that the Nigerian government should actually work for Nigerian people.
The Nigerian people have shown extraordinary resilience. But resilience is not enough. It is time for courage, from leaders and citizens alike. It is time to demand accountability, insist on transparency, defend civic freedoms, and refuse to normalise suffering. Nigeria cannot rise on the backs of a silenced people. It cannot progress while millions are hungry, unsafe, unheard, and unseen. The future will not change unless citizens insist on change.
2027: The Ballot Is the Weapon
The APC is counting on one thing above all else: Nigerian voter fatigue. They are betting that the hunger, the hardship, and the helplessness will translate not into votes for change, but into abstention, into resignation, into the broken whisper of “what difference does it make?”
Do not give them that victory.
The 2027 elections are not a date. They are a door. A door to a Nigeria where a mother in Aba does not have to choose between feeding her child and paying school fees. A door to a Nigeria where a farmer in Plateau plants without fear. A door to a Nigeria where a graduate in Lagos can build a life without packing a bag to leave. A door to a Nigeria where the public purse belongs to the public, not to the privileged few who have treated it as a private inheritance.
The APC has had its decade. It has given Nigeria two recessions, a collapsed currency, a hunger crisis touching 35 million citizens as of 2026, insecurity from Borno to the FCT, diplomatic humiliation on the world stage, and a democratic backslide that has alarmed regional and international observers alike.
The verdict of history on this era is already being written in the hollow cheeks of hungry children, in the empty shelves of shuttered shops, in the graves of those who died stampeding for a bag of rice.
The verdict of the ballot box in 2027 must complete the sentence.
The house of the wicked shall be overthrown. Scripture does not lie. History confirms it. And the Nigerian people, in their resilience, their memory, and their undefeated hope, will be its instrument.
The tabernacle of the upright shall flourish. That tabernacle is being built right now, ward by ward, voice by voice, vote by vote, under the banner of a coalition that has chosen people over power.
Nigeria does not need to be managed. Nigeria needs to be liberated.
The ADC is the movement. 2027 is the moment. The ballot is the weapon.
Register. Organise. Vote. And hold whoever wins accountable, because that too is the duty of a free people.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
