Three major opposition figures, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and former governors Nasir El-Rufai and Rotimi Amaechi, have come together to launch a scathing attack on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, accusing him of worsening Nigeria’s poverty, hunger, and insecurity.
They pledged to block his re-election in 2027.
The trio made their position clear over the weekend during a lecture titled “Weaponisation of Poverty as a Means of Underdevelopment: A Case Study of Nigeria” held in Abuja to mark Amaechi’s 60th birthday.
Atiku, who ran as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in 2023, did not mince words in his criticism of Tinubu’s leadership.
“You may call me a conspirator, you may call me anything. That is why we are in this alliance, to make sure we don’t allow them to continue weaponising poverty.” he said.
He accused the current administration of using poverty as a deliberate instrument of political manipulation.
“What we are experiencing in Nigeria today is state-sanctioned weaponisation of poverty,” Atiku said.
He shared a personal anecdote to illustrate his point:
“When I was growing up in the North, Kano State was the most prosperous. After secondary school, I was posted there. I never saw people sleeping outside, not under bridges, not in front of shops.”
However, he said a recent visit painted a grim picture.
“But recently, during a visit to Kano, I saw people sleeping everywhere, under bridges, on the streets, driven out by poverty and insecurity.”
He added “there’s a state agency in Kano that provides support to such people. They began their work, relocating people from under bridges, enlightening them, helping them. What happened? They were called to a meeting and told to stop.”
Also speaking at the event, Rotimi Amaechi emphasized that poverty and insecurity transcend ethnic or religious lines.
“We are all hungry, all of us are. If you are not hungry, I am. For us in the opposition, if we are serious, we can remove this man from power.”
“We must unite and be committed if we want to get out of this problem. For the opposition to lead us out of this problem, we must all agree to submit ourselves to the interest of the nation first before that of ourselves.”
He continued “hunger doesn’t recognise tribe or religion. This government has made people poorer, and that has increased the level of insecurity and crime in society.”
“Nigerians must know that the power resides with them. If we are serious about change, the people have the power to make it happen.”
He also revisited his refusal to support Tinubu in 2023, which he attributed to concerns over leadership capacity.
“I told Tinubu in Yola: I will not support you; I will not work for you. And I didn’t. I didn’t vote for him. It was about capacity.”
Amaechi criticised how voters are manipulated:
“Some of us voted along ethnic and religious lines. Innocent, uneducated people are manipulated to vote based on ethnicity and religion, and that’s why we are where we are.”
“After events like this, we go behind closed doors to plot how to grab power. No Nigerian leader truly cares about the people. The benefits of the fuel subsidy removal? They’re sitting in the pockets of the elite.”
He also shared a personal experience to highlight Nigeria’s global reputation:
“I’m ashamed. I was detained in Germany for 30 minutes. I had done nothing wrong. I was going for a medical check-up. I showed them my return ticket, yet they said, ‘Wait’. Just because I carried a green passport.”
Nasir El-Rufai painted a dire picture of the country’s current state.
“Nigeria is in its biggest trouble since 1914. That’s why we are working and conspiring to build a coalition to take Nigeria back on track, because right now, it is off track,” he said.
He warned of a new breed of leadership failure:
“We’ve allowed bandits, not the ones in the bush but those in urban areas, the so-called urban bandits, to take over leadership.”
El-Rufai stressed that Nigeria’s problem isn’t just about who gets power, but what they do with it:
“Our biggest problem is that we hand over power to people who have no idea what to do. They only know how to seize power but not what to do with it afterwards.”
He called for citizens to elect leaders with true capability:
“We need people with competence, capability, capacity, and commitment.”
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka commended Amaechi’s refusal to step down for Tinubu during the APC presidential primaries in 2022.
“The main reason I had to be here today is because I admire Rotimi Amaechi’s fighting spirit. It’s consistent.”
He recalled watching the primaries from abroad:
“I wasn’t in Nigeria, but I followed the primary on TV because I wanted to witness the drama. And I’m glad I did.”
He added, with irony “It gave me great, almost mischievous pleasure, rascally if you like, to see the incumbent president being given a dose of his own medicine.”
“While others were falling over themselves conceding, one man stood up and said, ‘No, I’m not conceding.’ That was Rotimi Amaechi. And I thought, this is what democracy is all about.”
Tinubu eventually emerged APC flagbearer with 1,271 votes, while Amaechi came second with 316.
Meanwhile, former CBN Governor and current Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, admitted his real understanding of poverty only came after he became a traditional ruler.
“Many of Nigeria’s elites have no real idea what poverty is. As an economist and a former CBN governor, I saw the numbers. But I didn’t know poverty until I became Emir.”
“You go to the villages and see the water they drink, the houses they live in, two-block classrooms with no roofs. Do we love the people, or do we just love ruling over them?”
He warned that development priorities are skewed:
“We build overpasses and underpasses in the cities for ourselves, while those in rural areas can’t even reach a clinic. We are in crisis. Our focus should be: how do we get out?”
Former Bayelsa Governor and Senator Seriake Dickson advised the opposition to be more strategic in their coalition efforts:
“There are a number of you who are expert conspirators, who know how to assemble coalitions and then take over governments as you did to my party in 2015.”
“Now, 11 years down the line, we thought that there would have been no weaponisation of poverty and that all the challenges of Nigeria would have been gone. But 11 years down the line, here we are, assembled to still bemoan the fate of our country.”
“This time, shine your eyes. As you live coalition and conspire, shine your eyes.”
Reacting to the opposition’s statements, APC National Director of Publicity Bala Ibrahim said the opposition lacks both “capacity and credibility” to unseat President Tinubu.
“When people speak out of anger because they are aggrieved, their assessments cannot be objective or fair,” he said.
“These are people with grudges against the current administration. Their judgement cannot withstand the test of conscience.”
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a reformer, and he has promised to deliver reforms that will lead Nigeria to prosperity. Yes, some people will feel offended in the process, that’s expected. But if the larger population stands to benefit, then so be it.”
Efforts to obtain a formal response from the Presidency were unsuccessful as calls and messages to spokespersons Bayo Onanuga and Daniel Bwala went unanswered.
