Aare Amerijoye DOT.B

There is a division of labour in the 2027 opposition, and it tells you everything about the two men at the top of it.

Atiku Abubakar is busy. He is on the road presenting a manifesto to Nigerians. He is articulating, sector by sector, how the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan will bring down the cost of fuel through domestic refining, bring down the cost of food through cheaper logistics, and put verifiable relief into the pockets of a people flattened by 3 years of yeye economics. He is being attacked by the Presidency every single day for daring to say, in the open, exactly what he will do.

Peter Obi is busy too. His Obidiots, his OK-Liars and his OK-Barbarians occupy the space between scheming and savaging. The OK-Liars are the propaganda operatives who craft the narrative. The OK-Barbarians are the mob that circulates it, attacks without restraint, and pulls the conversation into the gutter. Together, this joint machinery of the Obi and Kwankwaso ticket has not published a costed plan for the price of bread. They have published, reproduced, reposted and recycled every unsubstantiated story and stale allegation about Atiku Abubakar that the internet has held since 2007. That is their campaign. That is the whole of it.

One candidate is selling a programme. The other is selling a rumour. The suffering masses can tell the difference.

THE RESTRAINT IS OVER, AND HERE IS WHY

In April this year The Narrative Force placed on record a settled policy. We would not write a sentence, not even an implication, that spilled at Peter Obi. We called the Obidients our friends in the same opposition family. We wrote that the enemy was not inside the tent. We appealed, more than once, for a bridge to be built and not burned.

That restraint was owed to a man who was then inside our party, contending for our ticket, and owed to a movement we still hoped would fight Tinubu alongside us. Every word of it was sincere. Every word of it was offered in good faith.

Peter Obi is no longer in the African Democratic Congress. He walked out and became the candidate of another party. He is now a rival on the ballot, and his machine has spent the months since the walkout to continue attacking not the Presidency but the ADC candidate. A man who leaves your house and then throws stones at your window from the street is no longer a guest, and he is no longer owed the courtesies of one.

The moment he left our party, the tolerance for the innuendos ended. It could not continue. We have been engaging them venom for venom since that moment, bombarding every fabrication they circulate, answering every lie in real time, and matching their savagery with equal intensity. And let this be understood now, as we move into the final sprint before 16 January 2027. We shall do it more. We shall do it with unquenchable intensity. Every innuendo they post will be answered. Every smear will be met with fire. This is not a campaign tactic we will set down when the votes are counted. This is a principle we have adopted and will maintain until the last breath of this election season.

So let it be placed on the record with the same permanence as the April resolution. The bridge was offered. It was declined. From this day, on this platform, it is venom for venom.

THE STRATEGY OF THE SMEAR

Let us be honest about the calculation, because it is not hidden. The Obi camp has no record that outshines Atiku’s, no coalition that outnumbers his, and no zone that it holds more securely than he holds the North. So the plan is not to make Obi look good. The plan is to make Atiku look bad, so that Obi looks like a saint by comparison.

It is the oldest trick in the propaganda manual and the cheapest. You do not need evidence. You need volume. You take an innuendo, attach a foreign news clipping to it, add the word “indicted” that no court ever pronounced, and circulate it until repetition does the work that proof could not.

And here is the fact that ends the argument before it begins. In more than 2 decades of public life, through every regime and every enemy, Atiku Abubakar has never been charged before any court in Nigeria or anywhere else on any of these allegations. Not by Obasanjo, who wanted him destroyed and had the EFCC at his disposal. Not by Buhari. Not by Tinubu, who would give a limb for a charge sheet. If the men who held the entire apparatus of the Nigerian state could not find a case in 20 years, what exactly have the Obidiots found on Twitter?

GO TO COURT, OR GET BOMBARDED IN RETURN

So let us put the challenge to them plainly, because a polemic that does not throw down a gauntlet is only a complaint.

If Peter Obi, his Obidiots, his OK-Liars and his OK-Barbarians are so certain of what they are recycling, let them go to court. The courts are open. The Electoral Act provides a route. The Constitution provides a route. Take the allegations you post at midnight and file them at 9 in the morning. Swear to them. Sign them. Put your name where your innuendo is.

They will not. They have never done so and they never will, because the moment an allegation enters a courtroom it must carry evidence, and the moment it must carry evidence the Obidient factory has nothing to ship. Their entire operation depends on the gap between what can be posted and what can be proven. A court closes that gap. So they stay out of court and stay on the timeline.

But know this. When we started venom for venom, the moment we began to bombard their innuendos in every comment section, the moment we answered their lies with equal force, they discovered what it feels like to have no monopoly on the narrative. They found that you cannot lie unchallenged forever. They learned that for every unsubstantiated story they post, there will be ten answers in reply. They experienced what it means when the target turns around and starts shooting back.

And they folded. Not their leaders, not Obi who speaks in muted tones about civility. But the OK-Barbarians felt the heat and felt it immediately. They discovered that the algorithm has a memory, that comments sections have readers beyond their echo chamber, and that not every Nigerian believes what they are selling. That is why they cry toxicity now. That is why Aisha Yesufu appeals for “sportsmanship” while declaring capacity to “multi task effectively”. They had the playground to themselves once. They do not anymore.

If you are sure, go to court. If you are not sure, keep quiet. If you are neither, you are a propagandist, and Nigerians have finally learnt to recognise one. And they are learning what happens when a propagandist meets fire.

THE PUPPY AND THE RABBIT

There is a second half to this pattern, and it is comic if it were not so cynical.

For months the Obidient machine pours venom on Atiku, his family, his faith, his region and his supporters. Then the day Atiku’s supporters answer in kind, the cry goes up like a lost puppy in the rain. Suddenly the conversation is about “toxicity”. Suddenly the same handles that spent a year calling Atiku every name in the gutter are frightened, drenched rabbits, trembling at the harshness of the Nigerian political space. Voices like Aisha Yesufu’s rise to demand that Atiku “call his people to order”.

Where were those voices when the smearing began? Where was the appeal for decorum when the Obidiots were dragging a 79 year old statesman through every fabricated scandal they could find? The rule they want is simple. They may bite. Nobody may bite back.

And when the biting back begins, watch what Obi himself will do. He will not restrain his people. He will claim to be the victim. He will speak softly about civility while the OK-Barbarians, the mob that marches under his and Kwankwaso’s banner, carry on exactly as before. That is the pattern of 2023 and it is the pattern of today. He collects the sympathy; they do the savaging.

Aisha Yesufu provides the perfect illustration. She tweets that Atiku’s supporters have been attacking Obi’s supporters and that she has been one of their targets. She calls for decency and sportsmanship, appeals for the focus to be placed on Tinubu instead, and mourns the loss of party unity. Then, in the same breath, she writes this: “In the event that they want the swords drawn, well we have capacity to multi task effectively!” In other words, Obi’s camp reserves the right to attack as long as there is no answer. The moment an answer comes, the cry goes up that their candidate cannot control his people.

And here is something they may yet attempt in desperation. They may dust off Olusegun Obasanjo and make him the public Chairman of their vituperation against Atiku, reaching for the prestige of his name and the residual anger of their old feud to give weight to their campaign. If they do, it will fail. In 2023, when Obasanjo blessed the narrative against Atiku before the world, Atiku still secured nearly 7 million votes. The Obasanjo card was played then. It did not win. In 2027, with Tinubu’s economic catastrophe fresh in the memory of every Nigerian, with the subsidy crisis turning markets and kitchens upside down, with 141 million people below the poverty line, Obasanjo’s endorsement of innuendo will carry even less weight. The material conditions have moved. Sentiments have shifted. And we will meet every attack, including any that comes bearing his name, with the same venom for venom that ends this age of double standards.

Here is the truth he cannot escape. Peter Obi cannot control the OK-Barbarians. He has never been able to. They are not a structure he built and commands; they are a mood he rode and cannot dismount. A man who cannot call his own followers to order has no business demanding that Atiku call his to order, and a man who cannot govern a Twitter mob is asking Nigerians to believe he can govern a Federation of 200 million people. The OK-Barbarians are not Obi’s army. They are his albatross, hung around his neck by his own hand, and every voter outside the echo chamber can see it swinging.

That rule is dead. The Narrative Force has said it before and says it again. For 2027 presidential electioneering campaign it is venom for venom. Every falsehood will be answered. Every innuendo will be traced to its source and returned to sender. Nobody who spends a year throwing stones should expect to be handled like porcelain when the first stone comes back.

And let this be understood with unmistakable clarity. When they are attacked in return, they will cry and they will fold, just as they did when met with a response they did not anticipate. And we will keep attacking them, not only in comment sections and social media corners, but in broadcast studios, in public spaces, in the places where their narrative gets built and circulated. Their victimhood is a tactic. We are reading the tactic. And we are neutralising it with truth, with evidence, and with the same voltage they have brought to the field.

NOTHING SPECTACULAR

And what, in the end, is being protected by all this noise? What is the Obi record that the smear campaign is designed to keep out of the light?

Strip away the mythology and there is nothing spectacular there. His tenure as governor of Anambra, set beside the tenure of any other governor of his generation, is an ordinary tenure. The roads, the schools, the hospitals of Anambra are not different in kind from those of Ekiti, Kwara, Gombe or Cross River in the same years. What Obi has is not a record of transformation. What he has is a story about frugality, told so often and so loudly that a whole movement mistook the story for the substance.

Frugality is a virtue in a bursar. It is not a programme for a nation of over 200 million people in the grip of 15.9 per cent inflation, a 70,000 naira minimum wage worth about 47 dollars, and 6 in every 10 citizens living in poverty by the World Bank’s count. Nobody in Kano market or Mile 12 will eat frugality. They will eat cheaper food, from cheaper transport, from cheaper fuel, from Nigerian refineries. That is the AERP. It has a price tag, a ceiling, an audit clause and a date. Where is Obi’s?

Obi’s achievement is that he spent little. Atiku’s plan is that Nigerians will spend less. They are not the same thing.

THE PANDORA BOX OPENS: OBI’S OWN RECORD OF FAILURES

But if they wish to open the Pandora box of allegations and charges, let it be opened against both men. And let the record speak for itself.

During Obi’s tenure as governor, Anambra State was unable to conduct local government elections. The state apparatus simply lacked the capacity or the will. While other governors held and certified local government polls, Anambra’s local councils went without democratically elected leaders for extended periods. That is a failure not of budgeting but of governance itself.

The infrastructure record mirrors the mythology. Roads fell into disrepair. Schools were not built at the scale his frugality narrative suggests. Healthcare facilities remained understocked. These are not opinions; they are visible to anyone who has driven through Anambra’s towns or visited its public institutions since he left office.

Labour strikes rocked Anambra State during his administration. Civil servants, healthcare workers, teachers went unpaid. The narrative of a competent manager collides with the documentary evidence of industrial action, grievances unresolved, and a government unable to settle with its own workforce. That is the other side of the savings account.

And then there is the matter that must be said plainly. Obi moved Anambra State money into his own bank accounts and kept it there, accruing interest that flowed into his pockets while the state’s needs went unmet. He used Anambra to help himself while manufacturing a public narrative about his generosity, his frugality, his concern for the state. It is one thing to govern carefully. It is quite another to govern while accumulating personal wealth from the state’s deposits, then parade that wealth as evidence of your virtue.

The Obidiots and the OK-Barbarians will scream that these are unsubstantiated. They will demand to know the specific court cases, the specific documentation. Let them. And when they scream, let them remember that Atiku has never been charged with anything in 20 years, while Obi’s record can be examined, questioned, and dissected without fear of legal consequences because the man has built his political career on the appearance of accountability, not its practice.

Here is what the Obidiots, the OK-Liars and the OK-Barbarians have failed to understand about the country they claim to speak for.

The suffering masses have been watching this for 3 years. They watched the subsidy shock travel from the filling station to the motor park to the farm to the market to the kitchen. They watched the naira collapse. They watched the same government that wrecked them hand out 40,000 naira and call it shock response. They are past amusement. They are not scrolling for scandal. They are looking for the man with a plan, and they have found him.

That is why the North, the largest block of voters in the Federation, is consolidating behind the only Northern candidate on the ballot while the Southern vote splits 3 ways between Tinubu, Obi and Makinde. That is why the ADC primary drew more than 2.5 million members to the wards in a single day. That is why every attack from the Presidency this month has been aimed at Atiku’s subsidy plan and not at Obi’s, because the Presidency knows which candidate the masses are listening to.

The Obidients can recycle their innuendos until 15 January. On 16 January 2027 Nigerians will vote on the potency of a programme, not the persistence of a rumour. They will vote for cheaper fuel from Nigerian refineries, for the 15.8 trillion naira in subsidy savings to be accounted for kobo by kobo, for strong federating units, for security as the first duty of government, and for a man who has spent 5 decades building rather than 5 years posting.

Let Obi and his choir keep the rumours. Atiku will keep the people.

Atiku ki nse eni a ri fin.

Ìgbà díẹ̀ ló kù. Lokaci kaɗan ne ya rage. Obere oge ka ọ fọdụrụ.

Atiku2027 #Amaechi2027 #ADC #GoToCourt #TheNarrativeForce

Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
28 August 2026