Atiku, Skelewu and Oladejo’s dance of fallacy

The opinion piece “2027: Atiku and the desperate last dance” by Seye Oladejo is entitled to its conclusions. What it is not entitled to do is dress political opinion in the robes of established fact.

Calling Atiku Abubakar’s 2027 presidential campaign “desperate” is a judgement, not evidence. Saying that an election will be one’s final attempt does not establish desperation any more than contesting repeatedly establishes unfitness for office. The relevant questions should concern record, policy and capacity.

Take Kenneth Okonkwo. Yes, he criticised Atiku while campaigning for Peter Obi in 2023. Yes, he is now Atiku’s campaign spokesperson, an appointment publicly announced in July 2026. Political realignment may be ironic, but irony is not evidence of desperation. Nigerian politics is full of former opponents who later became allies: Femi Fani-Kayode, Daniel Bwala and others.

The same distortion appears in the discussion of Atiku’s Washington lobbying engagement. The contract exists. Records filed under the United States Foreign Agents Registration Act show a $1.2m, 12-month engagement with Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C., including government engagement and reputational work. But registering and engaging a lobbying firm under FARA is lawful. The existence of such a contract does not, by itself, establish misconduct or desperation.

Then, there is former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Critics enthusiastically quote Obasanjo’s harsh assessments of Atiku while conveniently forgetting what the same Obasanjo said when he endorsed Atiku for president on October 11, 2018.

Obasanjo said Atiku had “re-discovered and re-positioned himself”. He described him as having wide exposure, experience and outreach and stated that Atiku had the capacity to perform better than the then incumbent. He also said Atiku understood the economy and possessed business experience capable of supporting jobs and growth.

That does not mean Obasanjo’s later criticisms should be ignored. It means the complete record should be presented. Selectively quoting one period while suppressing another is advocacy, not history. It is being disingenuous!

The same standard applies to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund controversy. There were serious findings and disputes over the management of PTDF funds. But the Senate investigation also reported that it found no direct evidence of Atiku’s personal enrichment from the transactions, while identifying procedural and administrative breaches. The history is complicated. It should not be simplified merely to fit an election-season narrative.

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On petrol subsidy, the debate should equally begin with what is actually being proposed.

Atiku has advocated what his campaign describes as a production subsidy tied to domestically refined petroleum products, rather than simply recreating the old import-subsidy system. His campaign says the objective is to lower the pump price and reduce pressure on transportation and household costs.

The Tinubu-led APC has raised legitimate questions about its cost, legality and compatibility with the Petroleum Industry Act. Those questions deserve answers. But disagreement over a policy’s mechanics does not justify pretending the proposal is indistinguishable from the previous subsidy regime.

That is precisely what democratic debate should be about: competing policies, their numbers, their legal foundations and their likely consequences.

Atiku’s record should be interrogated. So should Tinubu’s. Every presidential candidate seeking power in 2027 should face scrutiny. But scrutiny is different from predetermined conclusions.

If the argument is that Atiku is desperate, produce evidence beyond the adjective. If his policies are unsustainable, interrogate the numbers. If his record contains failures, identify them alongside the complete institutional record. And if Obasanjo is to be summoned as a witness against him, intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that the same Obasanjo publicly endorsed him for president in 2018 and said he possessed the capacity to perform better than the incumbent.

An opinion does not become a fact because it is repeated forcefully. And an election should ultimately be an argument about Nigeria’s future, not an exercise in converting political adjectives into historical evidence.

Paul Ibe, Media Adviser to Atiku Abubakar, writes from Abuja