August 29, 2026
Atiku is playing a smart political game. He is tapping ruthlessly into rich veins of discontent across the country. Some say dangling a cocktail of shiny and impracticable promises to lure voters is worse than vote-buying. Others say Tinubu and the APC, who promised “Change” and then presided over corruption and cronyism, should get a taste of their own medicine: crude opportunism.
Atiku knows the national mood is raw. Poverty bites hardest in the North. Many people understand that a structural adjustment might yield lasting economic gain. But if Atiku can sell the idea that subsidy withdrawal was an elitist experiment that exposed the rural North to the worst shock, he may have crafted his best political message yet. If the narrative becomes that it impoverished the North more than the South, his job is effectively done.
The original sales pitch was simple. Subsidy was a national bellyache of wasted revenue. Removal was the bitter pill. The mouth is now bitter and the belly is in turmoil. The sweeteners that were supposed to ease the ordeal — cheaper transport, better schools, working clinics, a visible war on waste — have not arrived in the places that paid first. Peter Obi’s captured it : the people were asked to fast while the leaders feasted. Atiku’s idea sounds cynical but many think it’s better than the bitter pill by a bad doctor . End the therapy.
