Atiku Abubakar
Apart from Tinubu, there are many other examples of politicians’ hypocritical campaign poetry. From the US President George HW Bush, “read my lips, no new taxes,” to Donald Trump’s Mexico would pay for the wall, and Boris Johnson’s multiple false claims about Brexit, politicians first lie to win and leave you to deal with the consequences later.
A few months before the 2023 general elections, the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi, warned voters to reject any politician who promised an easy road. “Anybody who tells you that it is going to be easy,” he said in Kaduna in October 2022, “please, don’t vote for him. It’s either that he’s lying to you, or he does not know what job he’s going to get.”
The problem is that the most remarkable things politicians do at election time are not to say what needs to be done and how, but to say what voters want to hear, anyhow.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is a politician who knows the game and how to work the crowd. His recent declaration to restore subsidy on petrol if elected as president in 2027 is a classic demonstration of the statement that “in politics, as in war, all things are fair.”
