Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Nobody needs to argue with Segun Showunmi. Nigeria only needs to put him in the dock and let one witness question him. He cannot discredit this witness or shout it down on live television, because the witness is Segun Showunmi.
On 2 May 2019, with the presidential election behind us, he wrote this:
“When we were screaming that this nation be handed over to His Excellency Atiku Abubakar, for his ideas seem better all round to solve the challenges our nation faces; those who ought to know, pretended as though elections are meant to be a joke without consequences.”
Read it slowly. He was not suggesting or weighing options. He says he was screaming. He screamed that this nation be handed to Atiku Abubakar because Atiku’s ideas were better all round. He warned that people who treated elections as a joke would meet the consequences.
The consequences came. Nigerians meet them every morning at the market and every night on the roads. And the man who screamed has changed sides. He now sits in television studios and tells the country that Tinubu is smarter than Atiku.
The candidate did not move. The spokesman did.
THREE TIMES IN ONE YEAR
That tweet was not a slip, and it was not written in the heat of a campaign. Showunmi wrote the same thing again and again, in print, under his own name.
On 22 August 2019 he published an essay titled “Why Nigerians must thank Atiku Abubakar.” In it he praised the road Atiku had chosen in pursuing redress.
On 10 September 2019 he published another, titled “We are proud of our Symbol.” He called the February 2019 presidential election a stolen mandate. He described Atiku’s decision to go to court as a necessary sacrifice that a leader of Atiku’s mould had to make.
Those were his words, not ours. Atiku was a Symbol, and Showunmi was proud of him. Nigerians, he said, must thank him.
So he said it in May, in August and in September. A man who makes the same declaration three times in one year is not making a mistake. He is stating a conviction. The only question left is what that conviction was worth.
He told Nigerians to thank Atiku. He never told them his gratitude had an expiry date.
THE WITNESS SPEAKS AGAINST HIMSELF
First, the record of his employment. In 2019 he was a spokesman of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council. In 2023 nobody gave him that title. He appointed himself one of Atiku’s spokesmen and kept introducing himself that way until the press repeated it. So understand what we are looking at. This man pushed his way into Atiku’s camp to speak for him without being asked, and he now pushes his way onto television to speak against him, also without being asked. The self-appointed spokesman has become a self-appointed prosecutor. In both roles the only person who ever commissioned him is Segun Showunmi.
Second, January 2024. Eight months into the administration whose consequences he had predicted, he went on X and asked Daniel Bwala, another former Atiku spokesman who had crossed over, to “keep space for me.” So the opposition’s self-styled voice applied, in public, for a room in the ruling party.
Third, June 2025, on TVC. He praised Tinubu and Buhari as politically stable and consistent. Remember what he wrote in September 2019. The mandate Buhari carried that year was, in Showunmi’s own words, stolen. Six years later the same Buhari became his model of political stability. The election did not change. The man describing it did.
In that same TVC appearance he attacked the search for new opposition platforms: “This endless search for new platforms every election cycle irritates me.” This is the same man who, a year earlier, begged for a space on another platform. His irritation seems to apply only to other people’s journeys. He added that he would first consult Felix Morka and study the APC constitution, the way a man reads a tenancy agreement before moving his load.
Fourth, the friendship that keeps changing its birthday. In January 2024 he said he had known Tinubu since 1993, by name and by voice. Later, on Channels and on TVC, it became 1994. Even his history with the President moves depending on which studio he is sitting in. A man who cannot keep one year steady cannot be trusted to keep one conviction steady.
Fifth, the vow. On Arise he declared that if he ever backed Tinubu for 2027, he would leave the PDP and join the APC. He scorned divided loyalty: “I don’t believe in the nonsense of saying you are in one party.” Yet in June 2026 he was still described as a PDP chieftain, back on Arise, forecasting that Tinubu would win. He has not left, and he has not stopped. He has built a house on the very fence he called nonsense.
Sixth, the sermon. Years ago, at a book launch in Abuja, he condemned politicians who jump from platform to platform for personal gain. Then he told Nigerians: “Look in the mirror you might see the problem.”
Nigeria has looked. The mirror shows Segun Showunmi.
He wrote the rebuttal to himself in 2019. We are only reading it back to him.
THE ONLY THING THAT MOVED
What exactly changed between 2019 and 2026 to make the screamer go quiet? The ideas he campaigned for are still there. They are now written down in the Atiku Economic Recovery Plan. These are committed, published plans placed before Nigerians to examine. They grow out of the same record of reserves rebuilt, debt relief won and a telecoms revolution licensed, the record Showunmi once recited, unasked, to anyone who would listen.
The Symbol he was proud of in 2019 is still standing, and still taking his grievances to the courts rather than to the streets. Showunmi praised exactly that conduct in writing. A symbol does not change just because the man who pointed at it has pointed his finger somewhere else.
So Atiku stayed where he was. Showunmi’s address changed.
He likes to say, “I own my mouth, I own my words, and I own my arguments.” Nobody disputes that he owns his mouth. Nigerians have simply noticed how often it moves into new premises. A man may own his words. He cannot disown his archive.
A WORD TO THE SUFFERING NIGERIAN
The next time Segun Showunmi appears on your screen to explain why Atiku Abubakar is not fit to lead, do not waste your breath on him. Show him his tweet of 2 May 2019. Then show him his essays of August and September. Of all the commentators in Nigeria, he answered himself first and answered best, three times over.
He wrote that Nigerians must thank Atiku Abubakar. On 16 January 2027 they will do exactly that, with their votes. He also taught us that elections are not a joke without consequences, and Nigerians will take that lesson more seriously than its teacher did.
#Atiku2027 #ShowunmiAgainstShowunmi #ADC2027 #TheNarrativeForce
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
18 October 2026
