By Dr. Abayomi Arabambi
Sometime in 2015, shortly after Muhammadu Buhari won the presidential election but before his inauguration, I spoke with a prominent politician from the North. This man had spent the previous two years loudly branding President Goodluck Jonathan as weak on television and at rallies, claiming Boko Haram was winning simply because the President did not care. To him, only a change of leadership could save Nigeria.
So, I asked him: “Now that Buhari has won, what is your advice to him on ending the insurgency?”
He looked at me, smiled, and said: “That one is his problem.”
I have thought about that exchange frequently over the past few weeks. The very politicians who screamed about insecurity under Jonathan fell completely silent under Buhari—even when banditry exploded in their own backyards and kidnappers turned the North-West into a war zone.
Now, they are screaming again. This time, the target is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Twenty-SevenYears of Messy Progress
Nigerians must acknowledge a fundamental truth: we have made real gains under democracy. Twenty-five years of uninterrupted civilian rule is a milestone. In 1999, the military ran everything, journalists were routinely detained for asking tough questions, and elections were annulled whenever the generals felt like it.
Today, newspapers critique the presidency without fear, courts overturn gubernatorial elections, and legislators openly debate and vote against their own parties. It is messy, but it is democracy.
In 2015, an incumbent president lost and conceded before the final results were officially announced, a historic first. In 2023, power was handed over across ethnic and religious lines without a single tank on the street. This is progress, and we should not pretend otherwise simply because we areifiably angry about the value of the naira or the price of fuel.
Our grievances are real. The economy is not in the shape we expected it to be after two decades of democracy. Insecurity persists, and our youth are leaving the country in numbers that should embarrass any administration. Nobody is saying things are fine.
But a critical question arises: When did legitimate criticism end and political manipulation begin?
The Weaponisation of Grief
We have seen this script play out before. In 2013 and 2014, the opposition built a total narrative around Boko Haram. Every attack was framed as proof of Jonathan’s failure; every casualty was reduced to a political talking point. The goal was never to solve the problem; it was to leverage the tragedy to capture power.
This is not a defense of Jonathan. His administration was painfully slow to act and dismissed the insurgency as a minor distraction for far too long. He owns that failure.
However, when Buhari assumed office in 2015, insecurity did not magically disappear. According to data from the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, in the first half of 2015 alone, at least 2,266 people were killed by bandits and insurgents—a figure that already exceeds the 2,194 casualties recorded across the entirety of 2024. Furthermore, between July 2024 and June 2025, at least 4,722 individuals were abducted in 997 separate incidents, with kidnappers demanding roughly ₦48 billion and securing ₦2.57 billion in ransoms. Kidnapping has morphed into a highly lucrative industry.
Yet, the elites who screamed under Jonathan remained loudly silent under Buhari.
Recently, the Northern Ethnic Youth Group Assembly (NEYGA) called out this hypocrisy directly. Its spokesperson, Alhaji Ibrahim Dan-Musa, stated that opposition figures are “politicising insecurity” and attempting to “use the plight of innocent school pupils as a campaign tool.”
Dan-Musa pointed to an uncomfortable historical fact:
“Had the government in which Atiku served as Vice President nipped Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf in the bud… perhaps we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this type of insecurity.”
Regarding Peter Obi, Dan-Musa noted:
“The same Obi who now talks of ‘pawns in a ransom economy’ was part of a government that taught terrorists that money could be made from kidnapping schoolchildren.”
For these elites, the issue was never truly about national security; it was about who was sitting in Aso Rock.
The Playbook Against Tinubu
Today, the same alliance is deployment the exact same strategy against President Tinubu.
In May 2026, following a spate of school abductions, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar declared that President Tinubu has “no moral or political latitude to stay in Aso Villa a day longer” if abducted citizens remain in captivity. Peter Obi has similarly railed against the government, accusing it of turning schoolchildren into “pawns in a ransom economy” and claiming the administration lacks the capacity to protect its citizens.
Senator David Mark went even further during the National Opposition Summit in Ibadan in April 2026, claiming that “over 12,000 Nigerians lost their lives to conflict-related incidents in 2025” and that “fear has taken the place of freedom.”
These statements exploit powerful emotions, and their statistics may well be accurate. But here is the question they consistently refuse to answer: What is your alternative plan?
The opposition is not offering a comprehensive security blueprint. They are not explaining how they would recruit more soldiers, better equip the police, or dismantle the ransom economy. They fail to outline how they would secure the North-West, or whether they would increase the defense budget beyond the current ₦3.16 trillion—most of which, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is swallowed by personnel costs rather than intelligence and equipment.
They do not offer solutions; they just want Tinubu out.
Accountability vs. Destabilisation
An empty slogan is not enough to govern a nation, but it is enough to demoralise the electorate. It creates an atmosphere where desperate people will accept any change, even if that change proves worse.
That is precisely what occurred in 2015. Many Nigerians voted for Buhari not out of a deep belief in his capabilities, but out of a desperate desire to remove Jonathan. They got Buhari, and as the data demonstrates, insecurity grew far worse. President Tinubu inherited this deeply entrenched crisis. We cannot afford to make the same mistake again.
Let me be clear: I am neither a beneficiary of the Tinubu presidency nor a member of the APC. President Tinubu is not above criticism. Citizens have every right to demand hard answers.
While the government is actively collaborating with international partners like the United States on intelligence sharing, drone surveillance, and joint operations, these efforts take time to yield definitive results. However, this reality does not excuse a slow pace of progress. Accountability is the oxygen of democracy, and Tinubu must be held accountable every day by the media, civil society, and ordinary citizens.
But safeguarding Nigeria’s future beyond 2027 does not mean giving the President a free pass; he must earn every day he spends in office. Conversely, it means rejecting the reductionist idea that deep-seated insecurity can be solved simply by changing the face in the oval office. It requires demanding that our leaders treat national bloodshed as a tragedy, not a political asset.
In his recent Democracy Day national address, President Tinubu acknowledged this domestic tension:
“Criticise me, disagree with me, but never stop believing in Nigeria. The generation of our founding fathers secured independence, the generation of June 12 secured democracy. Our generation must secure prosperity. The road ahead is steep. But June 12 reminds us: Nigerians do not break. We bend, we bleed, but we do not break.”
This is the brand of patriotism we need—not blind loyalty, but the conscious decision to stay and fix what is broken.
Conclusion: The War for Resources
Nigerians deserve better than an elite class that only weeps for the nation when they are excluded from power. The opposition deserves a platform built on policy rather than grief, and President Tinubu deserves to be judged on his actual performance, rather than a smoke-and-mirrors campaign designed to truncate his tenure.
The aggressive clamping down on oil bunkering, illegal mining, foreign exchange rackets, tax evasion, and the fuel subsidy has cut off illegal cash pipelines. Unsurprisingly, this has precipitated wave after wave of coordinated media attacks, sponsored protests, misinformation, and ethnic blackmail. As the 2027 elections approach, the remnants of the old guard are determined to use the same destabilisation tactics deployed in the past to make the country ungovernable. Their grudge is not driven by a desire for governance perfection, but by a desperate struggle to regain control of Nigeria’s vast resources.
For the first time, we have a leader in Aso Rock who is refusing to take orders from political godfathers, throwing the old cabals into panic. The economic, financial, infrastructural, and industrial reforms must be allowed to mature beyond 2027. This gathering of old political forces is not a normal democratic alignment; it is an economic war waged for elite survival.
To conclude, we must reflect on the profound words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from his sermon in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 1965:
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”
Let us stand up for the truth of our nation’s journey, for a change.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
- Dr. Arabambi, Factional National Vice Chairman (South-West), Labour Party, Writes from Abeokuta
