Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
There is something almost comical about the latest APC defence of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s border policy.
Sunday Dare has spoken.
The APC propagandists have copied.
And apparently, nobody thought to check the arithmetic.
I took the pains to respond to Sunday Dare yesterday, but it is nauseating to see just how intellectually lazy some APC propagandists can be,simply regurgitating the fallacies reeled out by Sunday Dare and celebrating as though they have just hit the jackpot.
That is how political propaganda works: one person manufactures a talking point, another repeats it, and before long the repetition is presented as fact.
But borders are not Twitter hashtags. They have physical locations, border posts, officers, traders, roads and records.
So let us leave the propaganda aside and examine the facts.
FIRST, LET US CORRECT THE RECORD
Sunday Dare’s argument is that the Federal Government announced the reopening of most of Nigeria’s land borders on March 14, 2024, and has not reversed that position. The Presidency repeated that position again today, August 29, 2026, saying: “Nigeria’s land borders are already open.”
Notice something important.
Neither Dare nor the Presidency says that all previously closed border posts were reopened.
So nobody should create a straw man by pretending that Atiku claimed Tinubu said every single border post was open.
That is not the argument.
The argument is much simpler:
If substantial numbers of border posts remain closed or restricted, Atiku is perfectly entitled to say that those borders should be reopened.
The Presidency cannot have it both ways.
It cannot say “most” were reopened and then mock Atiku for proposing to reopen the borders that remain closed.
The obvious question is:
WHICH ONES ARE STILL CLOSED?
That is where the propaganda collapses.
THE CRUX: SHOW US THE OPEN BORDERS AND THE CLOSED ONES
The figures at the centre of this analysis identify only nine operational border posts out of more than 40 identified posts across the relevant frontiers.
Nine out of 40-plus is approximately 22 percent.
Nine is not most of forty-plus.
That is not ideology.
That is arithmetic.
And the border-by-border picture is even more devastating.
NIGER FRONTIER — APPROXIMATELY 1,608 KILOMETRES
Only four operational posts are identified:
Illela
Maigatari
Jibiya
Kamba
Other identified crossings include:
Magamar-Jibia
Kwangolam
Maiyardua
Baure
Dankama
Birni Kuka
and numerous others that remain closed.
So when government spokespersons tell Nigerians that the borders are “already open,” the natural question is:
Open where?
Four operational posts across a frontier stretching approximately 1,608 kilometres does not magically turn every other crossing into an operational border.
CHAD FRONTIER — APPROXIMATELY 85 KILOMETRES
Here the argument becomes even harder to explain away.
Zero operational posts.
Yes.
ZERO.
An entire international frontier with no operational border post under the figures being discussed.
So if Atiku says there are borders that need to be reopened, are APC propagandists seriously going to argue that the Nigeria–Chad frontier does not exist?
Perhaps Sunday Dare can enlighten Nigerians on whether zero is the new definition of “open.”
CAMEROON FRONTIER
Only two operational posts are identified:
Mfum
Ikom
Meanwhile, major crossings including Gwoza and Banki remain closed.
Again, the question is not whether Abuja issued a policy announcement in 2024.
The question is:
What is actually functioning on the ground?
THE KAMBA EMBARRASSMENT
And then there is Kamba.
Sunday Dare himself cites President Tinubu’s February 2026 reopening of the Kamba border as evidence of the administration’s border policy. The Presidency’s own statement says that President Tinubu opened the Kamba border in Kebbi State on February 14, 2026.
But here comes the small problem.
If Kamba was already functioning continuously under the supposed “borders are already open” position, why was Kamba being reopened in February 2026?
This is where the comedy writes itself.
Perhaps Sunday Dare would have Nigerians believe that Kamba was both open and being reopened at exactly the same time.
Maybe in the special vocabulary of presidential communications, a border can be “open,” then “opened,” while remaining somewhere between closed and open.
Ordinary Nigerians, however, understand something much simpler:
A border that was closed and subsequently reopened was, at some point, closed.
And if it was closed, then Atiku’s argument that some borders remain closed cannot be dismissed as though he invented the existence of closed borders.
“AN OPEN BORDER IS NOT AN UNCONTROLLED BORDER” — NOBODY DISAGREES
Dare spends considerable space explaining that an open border does not mean an uncontrolled border.
Excellent.
Nobody serious is arguing otherwise.
Atiku is not proposing that Nigeria should remove immigration officers, abolish Customs, dismantle surveillance or invite terrorists to walk through the border carrying welcome banners.
The argument is that Nigeria should have secure, properly managed and functioning borders that facilitate legitimate commerce rather than unnecessarily suffocating it.
There is nothing contradictory about that.
A country can have:
immigration control;
customs inspection;
cargo documentation;
biometric identification;
intelligence sharing;
surveillance technology;
coordinated military and security operations;
anti-smuggling enforcement; and
legitimate commercial movement.
That is called competent border management.
Closing legitimate channels and leaving traders to seek unofficial routes is not necessarily stronger border management.
It can simply mean the state loses visibility over economic activity.
THE SECURITY ARGUMENT: WHERE ARE THE RESULTS?
Dare invokes the Global Terrorism Index to establish that terrorist activity is concentrated near international borders.
Fine.
But security statistics must be applied consistently.
If border restrictions are being defended as a major security measure, Nigerians are entitled to ask:
What measurable security gains have resulted from them?
Because the same Global Terrorism Index cited by Dare records a severe deterioration in Nigeria’s terrorism situation in 2025.
The terrorism argument therefore cannot be:
“Borders are restricted because security is important.”
Of course security is important.
The real question is:
“What evidence demonstrates that these restrictions have produced the claimed security benefits?”
If the government has the figures, publish them.
How many terrorists were intercepted?
How many weapons were seized?
How many trafficking networks were disrupted?
How many attacks were prevented specifically because of border restrictions?
How much legitimate trade was lost?
How much revenue disappeared into informal routes?
Facts, please. Not adjectives.
THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT WIN THIS ARGUMENT BY CHANGING THE QUESTION
Atiku’s position is straightforward:
Reopen closed borders, facilitate legitimate commerce, and maintain effective security controls.
Dare’s response should therefore have been equally straightforward:
“Here is the complete list of all operational border posts. Here is the list of all closed posts. Here are the reasons for their closure. Here are the dates of closure and reopening. Here is the volume of legitimate trade passing through each.”
Instead, Nigerians are treated to an elaborate lecture on the difference between an open border and an uncontrolled border.
That is like asking a man why his shop is closed and receiving a twenty-minute lecture about the difference between a shop and a warehouse.
Sir, we asked whether the door is open.
And that is precisely why the APC propagandists repeating Sunday Dare’s statement need to stop regurgitating and start verifying.
THE REAL QUESTION FOR TINUBU AND DARE
President Tinubu’s government should publish the complete operational status of Nigeria’s land-border posts.
Not slogans.
Not press releases.
Not political insults.
The list.
Every border post.
OPEN.
CLOSED.
RESTRICTED.
DATE REOPENED.
CURRENT COMMERCIAL STATUS.
That would settle the matter.
Until then, Sunday Dare’s claim that Nigeria’s borders are “already open” remains an unnecessarily broad political slogan that does not answer the concrete question Atiku raised.
Because if nine out of more than 40 identified posts are operational under the figures being examined, while entire stretches of the Niger, Chad and Cameroon frontiers still have closed crossings, then Nigerians are entitled to ask why the government is more interested in arguing over Atiku’s vocabulary than publishing the actual border statistics.
FACTS HAVE NO PARTY CARD
This controversy has exposed something larger than a disagreement over borders.
It has exposed the increasing tendency of APC defenders to treat every criticism of the Tinubu administration as something to be defeated with a press statement rather than answered with evidence.
Sunday Dare says the borders are open.
The Presidency says most were reopened.
Kamba was later reopened.
Entire border stretches still have no operational posts under the figures being presented.
Major crossings remain closed.
And legitimate traders continue to complain about the consequences of prolonged restrictions.
Yet somehow the problem is Atiku for saying the borders should be reopened.
What a remarkable country.
Apparently, the government can reopen a border, celebrate the reopening, and then send its spokesman to explain that the border was already open.
Perhaps the next press statement will explain how a closed border can be reopened without ever having been closed.
But Nigerians are not obliged to participate in semantic gymnastics.
Show us the borders.
Show us which are open.
Show us which are closed.
Show us the numbers.
Then let the facts speak.
Until then, APC propagandists should stop merely photocopying Sunday Dare’s talking points.
Read.
Check.
Verify.
Think.
Because repetition does not turn propaganda into truth.
And when the arithmetic is 9 out of 40-plus, no amount of presidential prose can make nine become “most.” And even if “most” had been reopened, most cannot possibly mean all. Therefore, Atiku is right and correct: where borders remain closed, they should be reopened.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General
The Narrative Force
