Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
In a rented room in Makurdi, the roof has leaked for three rainy seasons. The tenant has moved his mattress four times. His children study by torchlight because the power has not come back since the last storm. Bags of rice he once bought have become cups. He has never seen the landlord. Nobody in the compound has.
Only the agent comes. He comes every quarter with a receipt book and a hard face. He does not ask about the roof. He does not ask about the children. He asks for the money.
That is the arrangement Bola Ahmed Tinubu has now offered the suffering Nigerian masses for 2027.
THE TIMETABLE THAT CONFESSED
This week the APC released its campaign timetable. The President will appear in person in only 12 states: Kaduna on 24 October, then Rivers, Plateau, Oyo, Borno, Enugu, Bauchi, Sokoto, Delta, Kano, Adamawa, and a grand finale in Lagos on 9 January 2027.
The remaining 24 states and the Federal Capital Territory get the agent. Governors and party chieftains will go with the receipt book. The landlord will stay behind.
His reason, given at the inauguration of his campaign council, is that the responsibility of his office “does not pause”. Governors will lead in the states. He will make time, he says, to speak to Nigerians.
Make time. For the people whose votes he wants.
Now read the list again, because it confesses more than its authors intended. Of the 12 states he will visit, he won only Rivers, Oyo and Borno in 2023. The other nine are states that rejected him.
Now look at the states that voted for him: Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo, Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Niger, Jigawa and Zamfara. Not one of them will see his face on the campaign trail. Jigawa and Kogi will get an APC rally, but not the man.
Nine states that rejected him will see his face. Nine states that voted for him will see only his agent.
So the tenants who paid last time are handed over to the agent. The landlord appears only on the plots where the rent is in arrears. Loyalty earns you nothing in this compound. Not even a visit.
THE LAUNDRY OF “STRATEGY”
Before the ink dried, the defenders arrived with buckets of whitewash. It is strategy, they said. It is focus. It is a President who puts governance first. Some of our press, whose duty is to ask hard questions, rushed to write the same sentence in different fonts.
Let us stop deceiving ourselves. Hypocrisy is killing Nigeria, and too much of the Nigerian press has become its laundry.
Turn the picture around. Suppose the ADC candidate announced that he would visit only 12 of 36 states and send deputies to the rest. The same columnists would be writing the obituary of his campaign by breakfast. The same television panels would be asking about stamina, about contempt for the voter, about entitlement. The same APC spokesmen would be holding press conferences on it daily.
When it is Tinubu, contempt becomes “strategy”. Absence becomes “focus”. Disdain becomes “statesmanship”. That is not analysis. That is a shameless double standard dressed in a suit.
And governance first? Which governance? The office that supposedly “does not pause” has paused again and again for long working vacations in Britain and France. In the run up to this very campaign, he spent three weeks on a working vacation in London and Paris.
Three weeks for London and Paris. Not one hour for Gusau, Makurdi, Lokoja, Abeokuta or Ado Ekiti.
THE QUESTION THE PRESS WOULD NOT ASK
Arise Television anchor Rufai Oseni, speaking on The Morning Show, has said what many have been too timid to say: “Let’s stop deceiving ourselves, Tinubu does not have capacity to campaign.”
Nigerians are entitled to that question, and they are entitled to an answer. A man who will not stand before 24 states to ask for their votes is not asking for a mandate. He is asking for a blank cheque.
This is not new. In December 2022 he refused the Arise town hall and sent his running mate, while Atiku sat in that chair in person. The next day he was in London at Chatham House, addressing foreigners, and even there he passed questions to his aides.
The pattern has simply hardened into policy. Foreign audiences get the landlord. Nigerians get the agent.
THE AGENT’S COMMISSION
The plan is plain. The APC’s 31 governors have pledged, through Governor Hope Uzodimma, to deliver their states. The landlord stays in the Villa, the agents fan out across the country, and the rent they intend to collect is your vote.
But an agent does not own the house, and a governor does not own the votes. In 2023 Tinubu lost Lagos, his own fortress, with a sitting APC governor in office. Atiku won Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Yobe and Gombe against sitting APC governors deploying the full weight of incumbency. Receipt books do not command consciences. The masses do.
And what is the agent coming to collect for? For petrol at a price that has emptied kitchens. For transport fares that have kept children home from school. For villages where farmers pay levies to bandits before they can enter their own farms. For a minimum wage that cannot carry a family to the end of the month.
This is a callous, rapacious tenancy, and the landlord has the effrontery to send for rent without fixing a single roof.
THE TENANCY EXPIRES ON 16 JANUARY
Every tenancy has an end date. This one expires on 16 January 2027.
On that day the tenant does not need to argue with the agent or plead with the landlord. He only needs to decide who holds the next lease on his house.
Atiku Abubakar has chosen the opposite road. He has inaugurated his campaign council and sent it to every state with one charge: go to the people. He has placed his committed plans before them to examine, question and own. A man who wants your vote should come and ask for it. That is not a courtesy. It is the least duty of anyone who wants to rule you.
Tinubu has told you, in his own timetable, what he thinks you are worth. Twenty four states and the FCT are not worth a visit. Their loyalty is not worth a handshake. Their suffering is not worth an hour of his time.
Send the agent back with an empty receipt book.
91 days to 16 January 2027.
#Atiku2027 #ADC #NoVoteForAbsenteeLandlord #TinubuMustGo
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
18 October 2026
