Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
In Kano, a trader in Kurmi Market opens his stall at dawn and closes it at dusk with less money than he started with. He used to feed three households. Now he feeds one, and badly.
In Enugu, a mother counts the cups of rice left in the bag and decides which of her children will eat twice today and which will eat once.
In Benue, a Tiv farmer stands at the edge of land his grandfather tilled. He has not planted it for two seasons, because the men with guns got there before the rains.
In the hills beyond Okene, an Ebira graduate with a second class upper has learnt to do everything except the work he trained for. On a dusty road in Bauchi, a Fulani family has sold the last of its cattle to pay for medicine that came too late.
In Ikole Ekiti, a retired teacher who taught half the town to read now waits at the bank for a pension that does not cover a month of drugs.
You know these people. Some of you are these people.
This article is not written to the politicians. It is written to you.
YOU HAVE CARRIED THIS COUNTRY ON YOUR HEAD
For three years you have been told to endure. Tighten your belt, they said, the pain is temporary. You tightened it until there were no holes left to tighten.
You paid more to reach the farm, more to reach the market, more to reach the hospital, more to bury your dead. You paid when the price of fuel climbed, and you paid again when the price of everything that travels on fuel climbed after it.
And while you paid, you watched the people you elected live as though they were governing another country.
Suffering has taught you patience. Let it now teach you your power.
Here is the truth no one in power wants you to hold on to. The men who rule you can raise prices, ignore your cries and dismiss your anger on television. But on one day, every four years, they need your permission. On 16 January 2027 that permission is yours to give or to withhold.
The question is not whether you are angry. You are. The question is where your anger will go. Anger that stays at home changes nothing. Anger that walks to the polling unit, holding a PVC, changes everything.
THEY HAVE DONE IT BEFORE
You should not vote for promises. You should vote for a record. Atiku Abubakar has one, and you lived inside it.
When he became Vice President in 1999, Nigeria was a debtor nation on its knees. External debt stood at about 28 billion dollars at handover. Foreign reserves were about 3.7 billion dollars. By the time that administration left office, reserves stood at about 45 billion dollars, and Nigeria had walked out of the Paris Club in 2006, after 18 billion dollars of debt was written off in the 2005 settlement.
The economy itself grew from 58 billion dollars in 1999 to 270 billion dollars in 2007.
Remember the telephone. In 1999 Nigeria had fewer than 500,000 lines, most of them dead. In 2001 the GSM licences were auctioned at 285 million dollars each, and within a few years the mai shayi, the okada rider and the village farmer each held a phone in his hand.
Remember the banks. A total of 89 weak banks were consolidated into 25 strong ones. Remember your pension, protected for the first time by the Pension Reform Act 2004.
Atiku did not watch these things happen from the sidelines. By law, he chaired the National Economic Council and the National Council on Privatisation, the engine room of that reform.
He has carried this economy before. He knows where the levers are.
Before government, he spent 20 years in the Nigeria Customs Service and retired as Deputy Director. With his own money he built the American University of Nigeria in Yola, which stayed open through the insurgency and fed displaced people in their hundreds of thousands. A man who feeds the hungry when no camera is watching will not forget them when he holds the treasury.
THE BUILDER FROM RIVERS
Beside Atiku stands Rotimi Amaechi, a man who has been handed broken things and returned them working.
When he became Governor of Rivers State in 2007, he inherited kidnapping run as an organised business, cult violence on the streets and multinationals packing their bags. He did not lament. He built.
Over 300 model schools rose across the state. Some 13,000 teachers were recruited. About 180 health centres were spread across the 23 local government areas, so that a pregnant woman in a creek community no longer had to cross water to find a nurse. Close to 900 kilometres of roads were laid. Port Harcourt became UNESCO World Book Capital in 2014.
As Minister of Transportation, he took rail projects that had become national jokes and put trains on them. About 700 kilometres of standard gauge lines were completed and put into service, among them Abuja to Kaduna, Lagos to Ibadan, and Itakpe to Warri, a line abandoned since 1987. Nigeria passed the first anti-piracy law in West and Central Africa, and the pirates who once owned our waters lost their grip.
One man restored the treasury. The other restored the tracks. Together they are a government ready on day one.
WHAT THEY WILL DO WITH YOUR VOTE
Atiku does not ask you to trust a slogan. He has published his committed plans in advance and placed them before you to examine him and his intentions. Read them, and you will find your own life written in them.
To the farmer in Benue who cannot reach his land: the first duty of an Atiku government is the safety of lives and property. A government that cannot protect the farmer cannot feed the nation.
To the trader in Kano and the mother in Enugu: the plan moves Nigeria beyond oil, making farming, factories and small businesses the engines of the economy. Oil enriches a few. Farms and workshops feed millions.
To the graduate in Okene: government will step back from running what it has failed to run, and open power transmission, rail and refining to serious investors, as was done when the telephone reached every pocket. That is how jobs are made, not by speeches.
To the young and to the women of Nigeria: at least 40 per cent of the Atiku cabinet will be women and young people. You will not be invited to clap at the table. You will sit at it.
To every state that is tired of going cap in hand to Abuja: restructuring is Atiku’s creed. He has pledged to empower the states to compete and reach their full potential. Ekiti will be free to grow on its strengths. So will Kebbi, Imo and Cross River.
He is not asking for a turn. He is offering a plan, and a record to prove he can deliver it.
90 DAYS
Count them. From today, there are 90 days to 16 January 2027.
In 90 days you can collect your PVC if you have not. In 90 days you can bring one more voter, then another, from your house, your street, your church, your mosque, your market. In 90 days you can turn your suffering from a story you tell into a verdict you deliver.
Do not sell your vote for a bag of rice that finishes in a week. You will pay for it for four years.
Do not stay at home and say your vote does not count. Those who want you to stay at home know exactly how much it counts.
On that Saturday, go early. Vote. Stay. Watch your vote counted, and walk home only when the result sheet is pasted.
The masses who have carried Nigeria on their heads will now carry Atiku and Amaechi into Aso Rock.
The trader in Kano, the mother in Enugu, the farmer in Benue, the graduate in Okene, the herder in Bauchi and the teacher in Ikole Ekiti are not waiting for a saviour. They are waiting for a choice. That choice is on the ballot, under the ADC.
Vote Atiku. Vote Amaechi. Vote ADC.
#Atiku2027 #AtikuAmaechi2027 #VoteADC #RescueNigeria
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
19 October 2026
