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The masses in Nigeria lack leadership. This much I have observed. And I will be honest with you — I find it very difficult to support any particular opposition leader. Truth be told.
Start with Atiku. The man will be eighty by the time Nigerians vote, and when BBC Hausa put his age to him, his answer was to ask whether he looks eighty. That is not a policy. To me he represents the past — the same recycled faces I do not want to see replace the corrupt Tinubu regime. And the company he keeps does not help. His loudest endorser, Dino Melaye — a man famous for a garage of luxury cars — recently looked into a camera and told the world his fortune began with a goat he bought at age twelve, whose offspring paid his WAEC, his JAMB, and two years at Ahmadu Bello University. I was sitting on my polo pony in southern France when I heard it, and I nearly fell off the horse laughing. People thought I had gone mad. From one goat to Apple, Microsoft and Eurobonds. Nigerians deserve better than fables.
Yes, I admire the way Atiku’s camp keeps pressure on Tinubu — he called the coastal highway deal shrouded in secrecy and named Tinubu and Chagoury as business partners long before others found their voices. He is not intimidated by the man. But this is a politician on his seventh presidential attempt, who spent roughly a decade barred from the United States after a US Senate report accused his family of moving forty million dollars in suspect funds into America — money the investigators linked in part to the Siemens bribery affair. Is it not time to hand the reins to younger, less tainted people?
Then there is Peter Obi, favourite of the youth and the dispossessed — now carrying the NDC flag with Kwankwaso beside him after walking out of the ADC coalition. He still causes me concern. He plays gentleman politics with a criminal president, and his fantasy of fixing Nigeria in a single term remains naive.
Where is his voice on the Chagoury empire? The facts are public. Thirteen billion dollars for the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, awarded to Hitech without competitive bidding, to a man convicted in 2000 of laundering Abacha’s stolen billions. Leaked documents showing the president’s own son co-owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands with Chagoury’s son. And in January this year, Tinubu hung Nigeria’s second-highest national honour around Chagoury’s neck — then weeks later handed his firm the trillion-naira Sokoto-Badagry superhighway as well, again without open bidding. One family cornering the mega-contracts of a starving nation, and Obi flies to the EU seeking the white man’s approval instead of making this the centre of his campaign. We do not need more assets in the West. Enough is enough.
I need to hear from him a rallying call — a speech to end all speeches — and a unity message that buries, once and for all, the lie of a Biafran government in Aso Rock. Northern whispers that he drove Hausas out of Anambra are disturbing and will cost him if left unanswered. Claims that his wealth is managed through his brother need airing and clearing. And the gossip-column talk about his estranged wife must be dealt with head-on — a man cannot preach domesticity to Nigerians while dodging questions about his own house.
On security: they came for him already. In February, gunmen trailed his convoy from an ADC event in Benin City and sprayed bullets at the gate of Chief Odigie-Oyegun’s residence, wrecking six or seven vehicles. The presidency’s spokesman dismissed his fears as fabricated propaganda. So Obi must stop complaining and start acting — tight, professional protection, always. His enemies will do anything to keep Tinubu in power.
And to his fanatical supporters: you were fanatical in 2023 too, and then you did not show up, and Tinubu bought the presidency. Show up this time. And stop savaging every critic of your candidate — it feeds accusations of Igbo chauvinism, and the last thing Nigeria needs after four years of Yoruba favouritism is another tribal fever. Obi should commit now to legislation outlawing tribal discrimination and tribally-motivated online abuse.
Neither man has an easy road. Both face a serious criminal with the full machinery of state behind him. Atiku has the scars and the experience, but he is no Churchill waiting out his wilderness years. Obi has the movement and the moral claim, but not yet the ruthlessness. Either is better than Tinubu — that is a certainty. Together they would have swept him into oblivion. But egos are big, the coalition shattered, and Aso Rock has room for only one backside.
Kio Amachree
Worldview International, Stockholm
#Nigeria #Nigeria2027 #Tinubu #Atiku #PeterObi #Chagoury #EndCorruption #CoastalHighway #AsoRock #NigerianPolitics #Accountability #LettersFromStockholm #OneNigeria
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