Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
It is the settled policy of The Narrative Force not to indulge in anything that spills at Peter Obi in any little form. That position was not adopted casually. It was adopted with deliberation, and it will be maintained with discipline.
My last essay drew a pointed response from the Head of Strategy and Policy of The Narrative Force, Hon. Kunle Oshobi. He drew my attention to the resolutions, and he was right to do so. I do not want to go outside those resolutions. Not by a sentence. Not by an implication.
But I am sounding a caution note. A necessary one. And I address it directly to our friends in the Obidient movement.
Atiku Abubakar is not your enemy. Bola Ahmed Tinubu is.
THE NOISE ACCUSATION AND WHAT IT REVEALS
Certain voices within the Obidient movement have called the surge of Atiku’s political popularity noise. They have dismissed his grassroots penetration as something manufactured, something purchased, something that evaporates the moment the money stops moving. They have been wrong. Demonstrably, verifiably, and consequentially wrong.
What they are calling noise is their own anxiety, dressed up in the language of principled objection. The ground truth they fear is this: based on the wide reach, acceptability, and demonstrated mobilisation capacity of Atiku Abubakar across this federation, his political infrastructure will cover 64.2 per cent of Nigeria’s 8,809 Wards, dominating the primary delegate architecture across approximately 5,659 wards. The African Democratic Congress, according to the party secretariat’s membership records, carries an active membership exceeding three million Nigerians from Sokoto to Calabar, from Maiduguri to Lagos.
That is not noise. That is a national political architecture. And architecture does not dissolve under the pressure of a social media campaign.
THE PRIMARY: CONSENSUS OR DIRECT, THE VERDICT IS THE SAME
The ADC will conduct its presidential primary through one of two constitutionally recognised processes: consensus or direct primary. Either route leads to the same destination.
Atiku Abubakar.
Under a consensus primary, the decisive instrument is delegate loyalty: which aspirant commands the loyalty of state structures, local government executives, ward chairmen, and zonal leaders sufficient to make resistance to his emergence politically untenable? In a party of over three million registered members, that question is answered not by social media trending charts but by the depth of human networks embedded in the party’s own structures from the national secretariat down to the polling unit level. Atiku’s operation will cover 5,659 of the ADC’s ward structures. Those ward-level presences will translate into delegate loyalty at every tier. State delegates who emerged from wards where Atiku’s networks are dominant will not arrive at a consensus convention as free agents. They will arrive as the product of the organisational work that produced their own positions within the party.
It must be stated plainly that a consensus primary rewards not only ward arithmetic but also the candidate whose vision, acceptability, and national stature command the broadest organic respect within the party’s leadership structure. On this point, the record speaks without ambiguity. The National Working Committee of the African Democratic Congress is an impartial organ. It has conducted itself above board. It will remain so. The NWC’s mandate is the integrity of the process, and that integrity is one of the ADC’s most valuable assets going into 2027. A transparent process superintended by a credible NWC will produce a result that reflects the genuine organisational weight on the ground. That ground is where Atiku’s strength is most formidable, and it is where the membership, freely and without coercion, will express its will. Should the party adopt direct primary, that route reinforces the same integrity by placing the verdict directly in the hands of three million registered members.
Under a direct primary, the verdict will be identical, because it draws on the same raw material: registered, mobilised, ward-level members activated through the party’s organisational chain on primary day. Digital enthusiasm will not mobilise a voter to a ward primary venue in Gashua, in Otukpo, in Ado-Ekiti, or in Daura. Ward-level party structure will. A local government party coordinator with a good relationship with a member will deliver that member to his ward location. No WhatsApp broadcast will.
THE WARD ARITHMETIC: NORTH AND SOUTH-WEST
A clear declaration is necessary before this section proceeds. Every ward projection, every percentage figure, and every state-by-state breakdown that follows is this writer’s own factual assessment, drawn from direct political experience and ground-level knowledge of ADC membership structures. These are not party secretariat projections. They are not campaign materials. They are the independent, evidence-based calculations of a political operative who stakes his analytical reputation on every figure stated below.
The starting point of Atiku’s primary arithmetic is the North, understood not as a monolithic bloc but as three distinct zones each contributing calculable weight.
In the North-West, across approximately 3,050 Wards, his performance will stand at 85 per cent, delivering approximately 2,593 wards. In the North-East, across approximately 1,400 Wards, 80 per cent will deliver approximately 1,120 wards. In the North-Central, across approximately 1,200 Wards, 75 per cent will deliver approximately 900 wards.
The three northern zones combined will deliver approximately 4,613 wards. That figure alone represents 52.4 per cent of Nigeria’s 8,809 Wards. It is a primary majority, decisive and unassailable, before a single southern ward is counted.
But the southern wards shall be counted. And here is the argument the Obidients did not anticipate.
The South-West is Tinubu’s political home in a general election. His APC structural grip on Lagos, his Yoruba solidarity appeal, his gubernatorial networks across the zone are well documented. None of that is relevant to the ADC primary. The ADC primary will not ask who controls the APC in Lagos. It will ask who controls the ADC in Lagos. It will ask who commands ADC membership loyalty in Ekiti, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Ogun, and Lagos when registered party members are summoned to their ward locations to cast a primary ballot.
On that question, the South-West ADC membership reality tells a story wholly different from the general election narrative.
In Ekiti State, across approximately 177 Wards, Atiku will command 80 per cent of ADC member loyalty, delivering approximately 142 wards. In Ondo State, across approximately 203 Wards, the same 80 per cent will deliver approximately 162 wards. In Osun State, across approximately 332 Wards, 80 per cent will deliver approximately 266 wards. In Oyo State, across approximately 351 Wards, 60 per cent will deliver approximately 211 wards. In Ogun State, across approximately 236 Wards, 60 per cent will deliver approximately 142 wards. In Lagos State, across approximately 245 Wards, even at the conservative figure of 50 per cent, Atiku will pick up approximately 123 wards.
The South-West total: 1,046 wards, drawn entirely from ADC membership structures, entirely independent of Tinubu’s general election networks.
One thousand and forty-six South-West wards added to 4,613 northern wards produces a combined primary total of 5,659 wards. That is 64.2 per cent of Nigeria’s 8,809 Wards.
This is not noise. This is arithmetic. And arithmetic, unlike social media, does not negotiate with wishful thinking.
DESK AND FIELD: THE DUAL REGISTER
Atiku’s followers are desk politicians and field politicians simultaneously. That dual register is the claim the Obidient movement has no honest answer to.
At the desk level, they carry the data, the legal architecture, and the electoral arithmetic. They are not outgunned in any broadcast studio or digital platform.
At the field level, they are ward executives with institutional histories across multiple electoral cycles, local government party officers who know the name of every registered ADC member in their unit. They will wake up before sunrise on primary day, ensure their members are transported, and remain at the ward venue until the exercise concludes. They are in Borno and Yobe, in Katsina and Sokoto, in Ekiti and Ondo, in Nasarawa and Benue, in locations that do not trend on Twitter but that will produce primary votes with the regularity of structures built to do exactly that.
This is the infrastructure the Obidients called noise. This is the infrastructure that will win both a consensus primary and a direct primary.
THE SCRIPT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE PRIMARY
For months, Obidient spokesmen declared that Peter Obi commands unmatched organic support and that only a dollarised primary could stop him. That assertion has now been quietly abandoned. In its place stands a new narrative: that APC members are massively registering in the ADC to vote for Atiku, that the three million membership figure is inflated, and that any primary result deviating from the anticipated Obidient outcome is, by definition, compromised.
The goalposts have moved. The excuses are ready. The verdict has been written before the primary has concluded. The Narrative Force notes this without drama and without descent. The record will hold it.
THE BRIDGE THAT CANNOT BE BURNED
There is a fact of recent political history that the noise has attempted to drown out. It will not stay drowned.
In 2019, Atiku Abubakar chose Peter Obi as his running mate for the PDP presidential election. He could have chosen any political heavyweight across the southern zones. He chose the meticulous, technocratic son of Anambra, and by that single act of generosity, lifted Peter Obi from regional recognition onto the national platform before the cameras and constituencies of a federal republic.
Before that choice, Peter Obi had no national political profile of consequence. After that choice, he had the national standing from which the Labour Party candidacy of 2023 became possible. Atiku built that bridge. Without condition. Without price.
Peter Obi acknowledged this truth in widely documented public statements during the 2022 campaign season, stating that he owed a great deal to Atiku Abubakar, that Atiku had given him the opportunity to stand on the national stage, and that he held him in the highest esteem. Those are Peter Obi’s own words, offered freely, before ambition crowded out gratitude.
If Peter Obi himself could honour the bridge that lifted him, who are the Obidients to reduce that bridge to ash? A movement that burns that bridge will not be fighting Tinubu. It will be fighting the only coalition with the structural depth, the 5,659-ward coverage, and the arithmetical credibility to remove Tinubu from Aso Rock.
A WORD TO OUR FRIENDS IN THE OBIDIENT MOVEMENT
The Narrative Force addresses you not as adversaries but as members of the same broad opposition family whose strategic miscalculation will carry consequences for the entire project of removing this administration.
Your anger is legitimate. Your energy is real. Your candidate carries genuine symbolic resonance for millions of young Nigerians. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute is the strategic wisdom of deploying that energy against Atiku Abubakar rather than against the incumbent who has presided over the most precipitous economic decline in Nigeria’s post-military history.
The ADC primary will be decided in the 8,809 Wards of this federation, not on Twitter, not on TikTok, not in broadcast studios. The enemy is in Aso Rock. Your ward presence, your digital infrastructure, your generational energy, and your legitimate anger belong on that target. Every unit of it. Without remainder.
Atiku Abubakar is not your enemy. Act accordingly.
THE CAUTION NOTE HAS BEEN SOUNDED
In 2023, Atiku and Obi together commanded 13,086,053 votes. Tinubu won with 8,794,726. United, the opposition surpassed Tinubu by more than four million votes. Divided, they handed an unpopular candidate the presidency through the arithmetic of division.
Nigeria cannot afford that surrender again. Not with a naira that has lost more than 70 per cent of its value since this administration took office. Not with 141 million Nigerians below the poverty line, according to World Bank and NBS poverty assessment data.
Four thousand, six hundred and thirteen northern wards. One thousand and forty-six South-West ADC membership wards. Five thousand, six hundred and fifty-nine total. Sixty-four point two per cent of the primary geography. This writer’s own factual projection. Staked publicly. Without reservation.
The bridge stands firm. The primary arithmetic shall not forgive division.
There is no second chance.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
20 April 2026
