Copyright tribuneonlineng
By Amerijoye. D. O. Temitope THE greatest tragedy of modern Nigeria is not that corruption exists; it is that corruption now wears a saint’s robe and preaches against itself. The All Progressives Congress (APC) has mastered this theatre, turning lies into an art form and deceit into daily devotion. For nearly a decade, the APC government has governed Nigeria not with vision but with vengeance, not with competence but with contrivance. And when their failures mount like mountains of unpaid promises, they resurrect their favourite scapegoat, Atiku Abubakar. The so-called Atiku corruption myth has become the last surviving oxygen tube of an exhausted propaganda machine. They cling to it because without that lie, their moral scaffolding collapses. For years they have used Atiku’s name as a smokescreen to mask their monumental incompetence, and that smokescreen is now thinning under the harsh light of truth. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the self-proclaimed architect of modern Lagos, now presides over the ruins of modern Nigeria. The naira wails, the economy bleeds, and the people fast not out of faith but out of famine. Under Tinubu’s APC, inflation has turned daily bread into luxury, fuel queues into national monuments, and hope into a museum artefact. Yet his media cronies, the merchants of make-believe, continue to sing choruses of imaginary progress. They hold candlelight vigils for Atiku’s reputation while their own house burns in broad daylight. Their hypocrisy has become the eighth wonder of the world. They accuse Atiku of corruption but cannot show a single conviction, a single judgment, or a single international sanction. Their evidence is air, their arguments echoes. But let us ask, where were their clean hands when Nigeria’s electoral morality was sold like groundnuts? Where was their conscience when our currency plunged into economic suicide? Tinubu, who campaigned on renewed hope, has renewed only hardship. He has become the embodiment of George Orwell’s warning that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. His handlers write fictions, his propagandists sell them as facts, and his praise-singers recycle them into national jingles. The tragedy is that too many Nigerians have been forced to clap for their own crucifixion. Every election season, the APC exhumes the carcass of an old narrative that Atiku is corrupt. It is their incense of distraction. They whisper it in the mosques, shout it in the markets, chant it on social media, hoping that the echo will drown out the groans of hunger. But Nigerians have grown teeth now; they chew propaganda for breakfast and spit it out before noon. This myth has become the cheapest commodity in the APC’s propaganda supermarket. But even lies, like perishable goods, have expiry dates. This one expired long ago, yet they still hawk it like stale bread. Atiku Abubakar’s life is the story of enterprise, while Tinubu’s is the story of empire. Atiku built industries such as Intels, Adama Beverages, Priam Group, and the American University of Nigeria, all employing thousands. Atiku’s wealth is transparent, traceable, and taxed. Atiku’s ambition has always been to build a nation; Tinubu’s obsession is to build a dynasty. Atiku unites while Tinubu divides. Atiku invests in people while Tinubu invests in power. And therein lies the reason they fear him; he represents what they can never imitate, legitimacy. The APC propaganda network operates like a dying religion, clinging to old scriptures and afraid of new revelations. Their apostles of deceit have no ideology, only insults. Ask them about policy and they respond with poison. Ask them about poverty and they shout Atiku. Ask them about governance and they point fingers at ghosts. They mistake social media noise for national consent and have reduced political communication to a contest of who can shout louder, not who can think deeper. But Nigeria has entered the age of discernment. The people now ask who built what, who solved what, and who improved what, and the answers mock the pretenders. Tinubu’s Lagos model, their supposed success story, has been unmasked as a myth. Behind the billboards of smart governance lies a city suffocating under multiple taxes, joblessness, and infrastructural chaos. If Lagos were the paradise they claim, why are its youths migrating in droves, turning European deserts and Mediterranean seas into cemeteries of dreams? The APC promised heaven but delivered a hall of hunger. They replaced competence with compensation, progress with propaganda, and truth with transaction. As Karl Marx once wrote, history repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce. Under Tinubu, we now live the farce. What moral right does a government that cannot feed its citizens have to lecture the nation about corruption? Under Tinubu, the price of food defies gravity, transportation mocks logic, and fuel prices stage daily coups against common sense. Yet the same regime that strangled the economy finds comfort in accusing Atiku of financial sin. What Atiku built with intellect they destroyed with incompetence. What he envisioned in policy they buried in patronage. What he symbolises, economic rebirth, they fear like light fears darkness. Atiku Abubakar’s sin, in the eyes of his opponents, is that he stands as the mirror reflecting their failure. He is the unrelenting proof that governance can be intelligent, transparent, and productive. They attack him because they cannot match him. They smear him because they cannot surpass him. They slander him because his competence exposes their mediocrity. He speaks of restructuring and they tremble, for restructuring would end the rent-seeking empire they have built. He speaks of justice and they panic, for justice would dismantle the machinery that sustains their illusion of power. Atiku Abubakar represents a future where governance is measured not by the volume of propaganda but by the weight of performance. In 2027, Nigerians will not vote out of emotion; they will vote out of exhaustion. The APC has exhausted the people’s patience, exhausted the treasury, and exhausted every illusion of reform. Tinubu’s regime is a sermon of suffering, its chorus is hunger, its benediction is despair. The Naira is on a pilgrimage to irrelevance, insecurity has graduated from menace to monster, and unemployment has become a national inheritance. Against this background, Atiku Abubakar stands not merely as a candidate but as a corrective, the antidote to a poisoned national bloodstream. He is the man whose experience, education, and economic literacy can pull Nigeria from this quicksand of mediocrity. The age of deceit is ending. The people have learned. They now demand receipts, not rhetoric; policies, not propaganda; leadership, not lordship. To the APC’s media missionaries, your pulpits are collapsing under the weight of your own hypocrisy. To the propagandists who shout that Atiku is corrupt, produce your evidence or forever hold your peace. Atiku Abubakar’s life is an open book; yours is a classified file. He built industries while you built inflation. He created jobs while you created excuses. He paid taxes while you paid thugs. He is the future you fear and the truth you cannot bury. The myth of Atiku’s corruption has died, and with it, the last illusion of the APC’s moral superiority. Tinubu’s government stands today as the most disastrous experiment in Nigeria’s democratic history, a regime where the people starve while the powerful celebrate, where propaganda replaces governance, and where deceit masquerades as destiny. The storm is gathering, and 2027 will not be another carnival of slogans. It will be the judgment of history, and history will remember who built and who destroyed, who lied and who led, who plundered and who planned. When that day comes, propaganda will have no altar to hide on and deceit will find no microphone. For the truth, long mocked, will finally roar, and its name will be Atiku Abubakar. Aare Amerijoye (DOT.B) is Director General, The Narrative Force
