Who created the hunger? Produce your proof

President Bola Tinubu asked a Kaduna crowd on Saturday who created the hunger his opponents keep describing, and a stadium built for applause supplied no answer. The names that belong in one were never far away. Rotimi Amaechi, now Atiku Abubakar’s running mate on the ADC ticket, served as President Muhammadu Buhari’s Minister of Transportation from 2015 to 2022, under the same APC banner where the question came from. Atiku replied that the remark was either delusion or political amnesia, which is the reply the line invited, and his statement was dated the same day. By Sunday, the voter held two accusations and no exhibits.

The President’s question is fair and answerable, although it demands an answer more substantial than a rally can provide. It is fair because men who made hunger the centrepiece of their campaign must explain their own years in office. It is answerable because hunger in Nigeria has a calendar, and every entry carries a signature. It is fatal to the rally because the answer, once written out, includes the signature of the man holding the pen: but you cannot jail a man for the crime his older brother had committed. A president inherits the starting line. He becomes accountable for how he manages what he inherits, and he cannot hand that responsibility back to the previous tenant. The question, therefore, is not simply who created the conditions Nigerians now endure, but who has done enough to change them.

That accountability begins with the economic record. The fuel subsidy was a standing charge on the treasury long before this administration; it was budgeted at about four trillion naira in 2022. In April 2023, the Buhari government suspended a planned removal, leaving both the decision and the bill to its successor. Tinubu would later say the outgoing government had made no provision for subsidy removal in the 2023 budget. The exchange rate was split across several windows that rewarded arbitrage and obscured the naira’s true value, and that arrangement also predated May 2023. Then came the President’s own entries. On May 29, 2023, in his inaugural address, he declared the subsidy gone and directed the Central Bank to work towards a single exchange rate. On June 14, the CBN merged its forex segments. Petrol prices climbed sharply, and the naira fell with them. Defenders of those decisions argue, with some force, that the old arrangements were unsustainable and that the pain was the price of a repair. They may be right. A repair that begins on May 29 has an owner from May 29, and what it has cost  citizens is his to explain.

The Yoruba say that when a child falls, he looks ahead, and when an elder falls, he looks behind. A campaign season rewards the child’s posture, and every candidate on a platform this year has adopted it. The elder’s posture, which asks what we stepped on and who left it there, is the one that prevents the next fall. It is the difference between a political argument that seeks applause and one that seeks an answer.

That is why the word “they” becomes so convenient in political argument. It gathers the opposition into a single accusation against the government while concealing how many of its leading figures once occupied positions of power themselves. Some now speak as though they had no part of the highest levels of decision-making, or as though their own records were beyond scrutiny.

The APC has held the presidency since 2015, and the PDP held it for sixteen years before that. Most of the major names now demanding an explanation once sat in a government that owed one. Atiku was Vice-President from 1999 to 2007. Amaechi governed Rivers State before he went to the Transport Ministry. Nasir el-Rufai, who governed Kaduna for the APC from 2015 to 2023, has said that Tinubu lost the state while he was governor, making him a witness from the very ground where the President spoke on Saturday. The honest answer to “Who created it?” is a list of administrations, decisions and failures, and it is longer than anyone on a podium will care to read aloud.

Achebe’s warning in A Man of the People remains relevant to this contest. In his portrait of a country where public office becomes an opportunity for private gain, the electorate’s cynicism is captured in a sentence that remains painfully relevant: “The people themselves had become even more cynical than their leaders and were apathetic into the bargain.” The danger is not simply that politicians fail to account for their years in office, but that citizens begin to expect nothing better from those who seek to replace them. When hunger becomes a campaign instrument rather than a public emergency, the voter is left choosing between competing explanations for suffering instead of demanding a credible plan to end it.

Nigerian politicians quote the Qur’an and the Bible with equal ease, and both offer a useful standard for the claims they make. In Surah Al-Baqarah (2:111), the Qur’an challenges those who make exclusive claims to produce their proof if they are truthful. The principle is not confined to theology. Proverbs 18:17 warns that whoever speaks first sounds right until his neighbour starts asking questions. A rally is built for the first speaker. A campaign season exists so the neighbour gets his turn.

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The government has a better answer than the one that made the headlines, and the National Bureau of Statistics supplied it. Headline inflation fell to 14.63 per cent in September from 15.39 per cent in August and 20.98 per cent a year earlier, while food prices fell by 1.55 per cent over the month. These are the President’s best exhibits, and he should lead with them. He should also state the caveats before an opponent does. One month’s dip in food prices is not yet a trend. Food inflation still stood at 19.59 per cent year on year, and in Lagos it reached 34.4 per cent. Slower increases are a relief of a sort, and they still fall short of being cheaper. A decline in the inflation rate does not mean that the cost of living has returned to where it was before the reforms. The figures show a change in the pace of price increases; whether that change has translated into a better life for households is a separate question.

The road deserves the same treatment, since both camps agree it can be checked. Julius Berger won the contract under the Buhari government at about N155 billion. The sum was later reviewed upwards to N797 billion, and the contractor sought N1.5 trillion, according to the Works Minister. The Tinubu government terminated the contract in late 2024 and re-awarded the rescoped first section to Infouest for N252.89bn. At the April 2025 flag-off, the Minister promised the expressway within fourteen months. In March, the ministry reaffirmed an end-of-April deadline for the section, reporting sixty of its eighty-one kilometres of concrete pavement delivered, a figure that counts both carriageways of a 40.5-kilometre dual road. April has passed, and the President inaugurated a section on Saturday. Atiku says a ceremony is no substitute for delivery, and he is right. The road is also the larger argument in miniature: its first signature is Buhari’s, its second is Tinubu’s, and the commuter has paid for both. A ribbon marks a day. Whether traders and drivers spend less time and money on that highway a year from now is the only test that counts.

The opposition should expect the same cross-examination and has not yet earned a better grade. Atiku’s reply answered a charge and offered voters a slogan that he will make life affordable again, rather than a policy. The six-party unity effort convened by the G100 on August 31 mandated five working groups to produce, within four weeks, a covenant, a reform programme, a transition charter, a unity framework and a roadmap to a common candidate. Seven weeks on, the public has yet to see the five documents the coalition promised, and Atiku was among the leaders who stayed away from the opening summit. A coalition that cannot say who will carry its ticket cannot yet say what it would do differently. Its leaders must show voters more than shared opposition to Tinubu; they must explain what they would change, how they would change it, and who would bear the cost.

Another test of leadership Atiku’s camp cannot wish away is whether those who promise to govern a country can meet their obligations to the people who work for them. The APC has accused the ADC of owing its staff more than a year’s salaries, an allegation the opposition has denied and should answer with verifiable payroll records. Atiku cannot ask Nigerians to entrust him with the national treasury while leaving legitimate questions about his own political organisation unanswered. Tinubu, for his part, can point to the Federal Government’s continued payment of regular salaries, although outstanding wage awards show that the record is not without blemish. That distinction matters. An opposition seeking to replace it must demonstrate its own capacity for financial discipline. Before Atiku promises to put Nigeria’s house in order, Nigerians are entitled to ask whether his own political house is in order.

The press should hold itself to the same standard. Reports of the rally set the President’s line beside Atiku’s reply, which was fair, though fairness of that kind leaves the reader with two claims and no verdict. The useful second report tests each against the record: who held which office, what the statistics show and what remains disputed. A reporter who passes on a rally claim unexamined lends it his own credibility. Whether the Renewed Hope Agenda exists is a matter of record; whether it is being implemented is a matter of evidence; whether it has reduced poverty is a matter of interpretation. A competent report keeps those three questions apart, and the reader is misinformed whenever a speaker is allowed to slide from one to another.

The Book of Daniel describes a banquet interrupted by a handwriting on a wall, and the writing was an audit: weighed in the balances, and found wanting (Daniel 5:27). On January 16, 2027, Nigerians will do the weighing. Applause, which is mostly air, will register very little on the scale.

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