From Atiku’s spokesmen to Tinubu’s spokesmen – yesterday, Atiku; today, Tinubu; tomorrow, who knows?, by Stephanie Shaakaa

A microphone has no permanent owner. The man holding it today may well be holding it for somebody else tomorrow. Segun Showunmi has given Nigerians another reason to examine the curious business of political loyalty. 

Read Also: 2027: Atiku suffering from ‘Emir complex’ — Segun Sowunmi

On October 15, 2026, he urged the public to support President Bola Tinubu’s re-election, declaring that prosperity is around the corner. He is now part of Tinubu’s presidential campaign communications team, persuading citizens that the President deserves four more years.

There is a detail worth remembering. Showunmi was the spokesman for Atiku Abubakar’s presidential campaign in 2019. Daniel Bwala, who served as a spokesman for Atiku’s 2023 campaign, is now Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication.

If Nigerian politics were a church, these two would have explaining to do about their conversion. One can almost see the congregation watching as yesterday’s defenders of one ambition arrive to preach the merits of another. The faces are familiar. The voices have not changed. Only the object of their praise has.

Showunmi and Bwala are free to change their minds. Nobody owns another man’s political allegiance forever. They can leave a party, embrace a former opponent, and discover fresh reasons to support a politician they once challenged. That is their constitutional right.

But there is a vast difference between changing your mind and expecting the public to develop amnesia.

These men were not casual supporters arguing politics over drinks. They were campaign spokesmen. They stood before cameras, spoke to journalists, defended their principals, and tried to persuade Nigerians to see presidential candidates through a specific lens.

Their words were meant to shape public opinion in a contest for the highest office in the land.

When Daniel Bwala declared on social media before his crossover that “The human brain is unique and miraculous… UNTIL YOU JOIN APC, THEN IT STOPS WORKING,” he was not offering a lighthearted joke. He was selling Nigerians a definitive moral assessment. Yet after joining the President’s camp, he brushed aside his past critiques during an Al Jazeera interview by insisting, “It’s all politics.”

Really?

If a spokesman can spend an election campaign arguing that a candidate is a threat to the nation, then cross over to that candidate’s camp and declare his former denunciations irrelevant, where does campaign duty end and personal conviction begin? Now the scenery has changed, and the public is expected to receive their new message with the same confidence with which they delivered the old one.

Showunmi’s declaration that prosperity is around the corner makes the issue particularly urgent. Nigerians have spent years hearing explanations for hardship, assurances that reforms will eventually pay off, and promises that the pain of today is the price of a better tomorrow.

The market woman still calculates what she can afford before buying food. The worker still watches transport fares swallow a growing share of his salary. Parents still struggle with school fees, rent, electricity bills, and the cost of keeping a household running. For millions of people, the corner called prosperity has become a destination repeatedly announced but never quite reached.

Showunmi is entitled to believe Tinubu deserves another term. But he must do more than announce that better days are approaching. He should tell Nigerians what evidence supports his optimism, what tangible improvements they should already see, and when the promised relief will begin to make a difference in their lives. A campaign spokesman can sell hope; he cannot demand that hardship be mistaken for progress simply because he has found a more powerful principal.

If Tinubu’s reforms are working, Showunmi should make the case. If the President’s policies have put Nigeria on a path to growth, let him explain the evidence and show how the benefits will reach ordinary households. If continuity is the answer, let him explain why citizens should endure another four years rather than choose a different direction.

The microphone gives him an audience. It does not give him immunity from questions.

Perhaps Bwala sincerely reconsidered his position. Perhaps Showunmi discovered genuine merit in the President’s leadership. People can change their minds for valid reasons, and we need not invent sinister motives to demand an explanation.

The metaphor that clings most obstinately to this political culture remains transactional,an indictment of an establishment where political conviction lasts only as long as the arrangement remains lucrative. Welcome to the Nigerian political marketplace, where the occupants change rooms, the promises acquire fresh packaging, and yesterday’s sworn enemies discover they have always shared common ground.

The cost of this arrangement is not merely the embarrassment of watching familiar faces defend unfamiliar positions. It is the steady erosion of public trust. When political arguments change with the fortunes of the people making them, citizens have reason to question whether they are hearing honest assessments of the country’s problems or simply the latest sales pitch from a campaign office.

Showunmi and Bwala need not apologize for leaving Atiku’s camp. They do, however, have an opportunity to demonstrate that their present positions rest on more than the convenience of political realignment. They can explain what they believe Tinubu has done right, address what he has done wrong, and make a credible case for why another term would serve Nigeria’s interests.

As 2027 approaches, the country will be crowded with people eager to explain why their preferred candidate deserves power. Some will have remained loyal to one camp for decades. Others will have traveled through several parties, alliances, and campaign offices. Voters should judge each argument on its merits, but they must not be expected to forget the history of the people making it.

Nigerians are not an audience to be entertained between elections, nor are they customers obliged to buy whatever a familiar salesman places before them. They have to live with the consequences of political decisions long after campaign slogans have faded and spokesmen have moved on.

Showunmi can tell Nigerians that prosperity is near. Bwala can defend the President’s record. Both men can campaign for Tinubu with all the eloquence they possess. But the public is entitled to place their present arguments beside their past ones and ask the question that neither a new title nor a new political uniform can make disappear.

If you were right then, what changed? And if you are right now, why should we believe you?

Asking these questions is not persecution,it is the tax every holder of a public microphone must pay.

Holding men to their own recorded words is not an attack,it is the bare minimum duty of a critical electorate.

The microphone may belong to whoever is holding it. The judgment belongs to the people listening.