Fombina Times, Jimeta-Yola, Yola (2026)

12/09/2026

Why I Will Stand With Tinubu in 2027

A son of Adamawa makes his case and asks for a better argument

By Ahmad I. Sajoh, fnipr

Let me begin with the disclosures, because a man who hides his interests forfeits the right to be believed. I am a son of Adamawa State. Atiku Abubakar is our own, and nothing I write here diminishes that.

He has carried our name into rooms most of us will never enter, and for a generation of us he was proof that the Fulani boy from Jada could stand anywhere in Nigeria without apology.

I have unquestioned respect for the former Vice President. I also had the privilege of serving in the same cabinet as his daughter, a woman I count as a dear sister and will count as a dear sister long after January 2027 has come and gone.

But affection is not a governing philosophy. Kinship is not a manifesto. And a ballot is not a greeting card. When I measure the two men now asking Nigerians for the highest office, I find that the former Vice President does not tick the boxes that matter most to me.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu does. Let me explain why, and let me do it on grounds that can be argued with, because that is the only kind of politics worth having.

First test: does he build people? There is one question I have come to trust above all others when judging a public man. Not what he has acquired. Not what he has said. Whom has he built? Consider the ledger.

When Olusegun Obasanjo cast Atiku out in 2006 and left him politically orphaned, it was Tinubu's progressive platform that took him in and gave him a vehicle to contest the 2007 presidency.

When Nuhu Ribadu — my brother, and one of the most consequential public servants of our era — was hounded out of the EFCC, stripped of rank and driven into exile, it was Tinubu's platform that brought him back into national reckoning and handed him a presidential ticket in 2011. Today he sits as National Security Adviser. Dignity restored.

When Muhammadu Buhari had won the North three times and could not cross the Niger, it was Tinubu who assembled the pan-Nigerian platform that finally made him President in 2015 and produced a Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, from his own Lagos cabinet.

That is only the headline. Beneath it is a roll call that is genuinely difficult to complete in one sitting: a Vice President, a succession of Lagos governors; Fashola, Ambode, Sanwo-Olu — who have kept a megacity governable for twenty-seven unbroken years; Senate and House leaders; ministers; commissioners; a whole professional class of technocrats who entered public life through Bourdillon and now run institutions across the federation.

Now attempt the same exercise for the former Vice President. Name one person, one mentored, raised and positioned by Atiku Abubakar who is consequential in Nigerian public life today on the strength of that mentorship.

I have asked this question in many rooms. I am still waiting for an answer that survives a second question. This is not a small matter.

A President governs through people. He cannot sign every memo, chair every committee, inspect every road.

The single most reliable predictor of how an administration will perform is the quality of the bench its principal has spent thirty years assembling. Tinubu has a bench. It is visible. You can name it, audit it, and hold it to account. That is a governing asset.

Tinubu builds men and women. Atiku builds businesses which is honourable, but it is not the same thing, and Nigeria is not a business.

Second test: what did each man build that outlived him?

Permit me a personal recollection, because I was there. When Tinubu set out to register a television station under the name Ghotel, some of us protested. Our objection was straightforward: a group we were associated with had handled the registration of Atiku's Gotel two years earlier, and the mischievous "h" did not fool anybody. The protest was made.

The name was dropped. What emerged instead was Television Continental, TVC. Set the two side by side today. Gotel held a dual licence for both satellite and terrestrial broadcasting, a genuine advantage and a real head start.

Yet TVC News is now a national broadcaster with a continental footprint, a newsroom that sets agendas, and a place in the first tier of Nigerian media.

Gotel remains, with respect, a regional station. The head start was Atiku's. The institution is Tinubu's.

I raise this not to belittle a fellow Adamawa enterprise, but because it illustrates a pattern that repeats itself at every scale of these two careers. One man builds things that grow past him. The other builds things that depend on him.

Third test: consistency, or convenience?

Between 1999 and today, the former Vice President has travelled from the PDP to the Action Congress, back to the PDP, on to the APC, back again to the PDP, and now to the ADC six movements, each one coinciding with the arithmetic of a presidential ticket rather than any discernible change of conviction.

Tinubu's journey runs AD to AC to ACN to APC: one continuous progressive lineage, each successor party larger than the last, each one built rather than borrowed.

I do not say this to score a debating point. I say it because a party is the instrument through which a President governs, and a man who has never sustained one has never demonstrated that he can build the machinery his own promises require.

Fourth test: is the offer grounded in law, fact and practicability?

Here we arrive at the heart of it, and at the reason this article is written at all.

The former Vice President now pledges to restore petrol subsidy. This is the same man who, at the Lagos Business School in 2022, described subsidy as a fraud, reminded his audience that he had personally chaired the committee that removed the first and second phases, and promised to finish the job.

This is the man his own ideological allies call the father of subsidy removal and wholesale privatisation in the Fourth Republic.

He campaigned on deregulation in 2023. He is campaigning against it in 2026. There is nothing dishonourable in changing one's mind. Circumstances change; evidence changes.

But a man who reverses himself owes Nigerians an explanation and, frankly, an apology. What we have received instead is a re-labelling: the promise is now a "targeted, capped" subsidy, transparently budgeted and independently audited.

Examine it against the law and it does not stand. The Atiku Economic Recovery Plan proposes allocating domestic crude to refineries at below-market prices.

The Petroleum Industry Act of 2021 makes NNPC Limited a commercial entity legally bound to sell its equity crude at market-reflective rates.

You cannot do the one without repealing the other, and no serious person believes a National Assembly would unpick the PIA in an administration's first year.

Examine it against practicability and it fares worse. A capped pump price destroys the commercial incentive to haul fuel to Mubi, to Ganye, to Michika.

Product flows to Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt where margins are safe, and the rest of us return to the black market and the jerrycan the precise arrangement the North endured for thirty years.

Adamawa would not be a beneficiary of this policy. Adamawa would be its first casualty. This is not economics. It is populist rhetoric, and it should be named as such.

What the reform record actually shows. I will not insult anyone by pretending the last three years have been easy. They have not.

Households are still hurting. Food prices still wound. Over a hundred million Nigerians remain in multidimensional poverty, and insecurity still steals farming seasons across the North East.

Any supporter of this administration who will not say that plainly is not worth listening to. But the direction of travel matters, and it is measurable.

According to the Nigeria Revenue Service's 2023-versus-2026 Economic Snapshot and NBS data: headline inflation has fallen from a peak of 34.8 per cent in December 2024 to about 15.9 per cent. External reserves have moved from an unencumbered $3.99 billion in May 2023 to over $50 billion, the highest in seventeen years.

Annual tax collections have risen from ₦12.3 trillion to ₦28.3 trillion without a single new tax on the poor. The balance of payments has swung from a $3.34 billion deficit to surplus.

GDP grew 4.43 per cent in the second quarter of 2026, up from 2.74 per cent in 2023. FTSE Russell has restored Nigeria to its Frontier Market index. Dangote's refinery is running at 650,000 barrels per day.

And for those of us in the states, the most under-reported fact of this administration: subsidy removal and exchange-rate unification have transformed what arrives in Yola every month from the Federation Account.

Atiku has spoken about restructuring and fiscal federalism for twenty years. Tinubu has quietly delivered more money and more autonomy to the subnationals than any restructuring conference ever did.

That is the argument. Reform is working slowly and painfully; reversal would be fast and catastrophic.

The campaign we deserve. We are now in the campaign season proper. The presidential election is on 16 January 2027. Both candidates signed the peace accord.

And what has dominated the first weeks? Lobbying firms in Washington. FBI and DEA files. Thirty-year-old allegations recycled on both sides at a reported cost of millions of dollars.

Nigerians are not eating those files. Here are the questions I want put to every candidate, in public, on a debate stage, with follow-ups:

1. Security. Precisely how do you end mass abductions and farmer-herder killings? State police — yes or no, and with what funding formula?

2. Food. What gets a farmer in Numan back on his land, with inputs he can afford and a road to market?

3. Power. What is your number for grid capacity in four years, and how will you finance it?

4. Fiscal federalism. Which functions on the Exclusive List move to the states, and in what year?

5. Jobs. Six hundred thousand graduates a year. Where do they work?

6. Fuel. If you restore subsidy, what do you cut to pay for it, and what happens to the PIA?

Answer those, and let Nigerians judge. I have made my choice, and I have set out my reasons so that they can be tested rather than merely believed.

I would rather lose an argument about policy than win one about paperwork from 1993.

To my brothers and sisters in Adamawa who will disagree with me, and there will be many: disagree loudly, but disagree on the issues.

Our state has given this country a Vice President, a Secretary to the Government of the Federation, ministers, generals and scholars. We are more than capable of a serious conversation. Let us have one.

Ahmad I. Sajoh, fnipr, is Head of Media and Publicity, Adamawa Progressive Elders Council (APEC).

11/09/2026

The past cannot be unlived: On Nigeria’s historical revisionism and the ethics of coexistence

By Umar Ardo, Ph.D

Beginning approximately forty years ago, Nigeria entered what I would call the “politics of grievance” - a mode of political mobilisation in which leaders, groups or movements seek support not primarily by offering programmes or policies, but by cultivating, amplifying and organising real, inherited, exaggerated or imagined grievances. They convert perceived injury into political claim, identity and permanent moral currency.

2. The politics of grievance offers its devotees a seductive simplicity: one people, one name, one scapegoat for their societal inadequacies and frustrations. In today’s Nigeria, they made that scapegoat to wear a Fulani face. The phenomenon gained particular currency over the past decade, especially following the defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan and the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari.

3. We are now told, largely through social media and beyond, that the Fulani are responsible for virtually every problem in Nigeria: that nothing bad happens without them and nothing good happens where they are; that they are foreigners who must be expelled from the supposed “ancestral homelands” of indigenous peoples; be excluded from elected offices, the military and civil service; be stripped of their emirates; and even be prevented from leading fellow Muslims in prayer.

4. The Sultan is maligned, Sheikh Usman dan Fodio rebranded a bandit and the Sokoto Caliphate recast as a criminal enterprise. Some have even produced literature, including legal briefs, calling on foreign powers to intervene and help “indigenous Nigerians” rid the country of the Fulani menace. Most disturbing is that this narrative is no longer merely rhetorical. Active steps are being taken by individuals, groups and, in some cases, public authorities to translate it into reality.

5. This campaign wears the language of justice while practising the logic of collective punishment. Its method is the deliberate and systematic distortion of historical truths; its purpose is to respond to a perceived or real present danger by protecting or advancing some particular self-interests. It is driven by fear, prejudice and inferiority complex. It seeks to poison the mind of the public against the entire scapegoated people until their humanity becomes invisible and every misfortune is attributed to them.

6. Like all propaganda, it presents only one side - the side calculated to generate anger and hatred - while concealing the other side necessary for understanding the truth. Its proponents are what we call in History, victims of the “Kisra Effect.” The earlier they cleanse their hearts of this vice, the better for themselves and for Nigeria. Truth alone can liberate them, but liberation requires the courage to confront the whole truth rather than the portion that serves a preconceived grievance.

7. For truth is always complete. There is no such thing as a half-truth that can constitute the whole truth. The pros and cons of an issue together make the complete picture. When one side is deliberately presented while the other is suppressed, the result is not truth but prejudice. This is precisely what has happened to the argument advanced by the “victims of the Kisra Effect”: they emphasise the history that indicts their scapegoat while concealing the history that complicates their own case. Their argument consequently fails philosophically, logically, historically and morally.

8. By summoning the Christian West - above all the United States - as moral witness to their cause, the architects of this campaign have indulged themselves into a hypocrisy of historical amnesia. The audacity is breathtaking. What is America but one of history’s most consequential products of conquest and displacement? The lands now called the United States were inhabited by the Cherokee, Iroquois, Sioux and hundreds of other nations whose dispossession was systematic and irreversible. The same historical pattern is found in Australia, Canada and virtually every country on earth.

9. Nigeria is no different. The Hausa city-states rose through warfare; the Nupe kingdoms expanded through conquest; and what is now called the Middle Belt is itself a tapestry of migrations, conquests, settlements, absorptions and political transformations. To demand the reversal of Fulani settlement while resting upon the conquest-borne inheritance of modern states is not principle. It is selective historical amnesia wielded as a political weapon.

10. The fundamental error is the assumption that contemporary political communities can be returned to some imaginary historical moment when every ethnic group occupied an uncontested and exclusive homeland. There is no such Nigeria. Indeed, there is no such society anywhere in the world. Human history is a history of migration, settlement, interaction, conflict, assimilation, conquest, intermarriage, displacement, incorporation and cultural exchange. Peoples moved; states expanded and contracted; empires rose and disappeared; languages crossed geographical boundaries; and new identities emerged from the interaction of older identities.

11. The Hausa, Fulani, Nupe, Kanuri, Yoruba, Igbo, Tiv, Ijaw, Efik, Jukun, Idoma, Berom, Babur, Gbagyi, Bachama, Esan, Tangale and hundreds of other peoples did not arrive simultaneously at their present locations, nor have they remained frozen there throughout history. Territories changed hands. Kingdoms expanded. Populations migrated. Political authorities incorporated other communities. Nomadic and sedentary peoples interacted. Trade connected distant societies, religions crossed ethnic boundaries and intermarriage created families whose identities cannot be reduced to a single ethnic category.

12. The notion that Nigeria can therefore be reconstructed according to some supposedly pure map of “ancestral ownership” is politically delusional and practically untenable. Applied consistently, it would not produce justice; it would produce an endless territorial dispute, because every territorial claim would generate another. The moment political discourse asks, “Who was here first?”, it opens a door no modern multi-ethnic state can safely pass through. How far back should we go - five hundred years, one thousand, two thousand? What evidence determines the starting point? Was the first settler necessarily the permanent owner? And what happens when two communities can demonstrate successive settlement in the same territory?

13. These are not merely academic questions. They expose the fatal weakness of ancestral exclusivism. Every generation could reopen the territorial question; every community could manufacture a historical grievance; and every conquest could become a justification for contemporary expulsion. That is not justice. It is a blueprint for perpetual war.

14. Also, importantly, is the moral corruption of collective guilt. Banditry, kidnapping and herder-farmer violence are real and grievous. Their perpetrators must be identified and punished under law, regardless of ethnicity. But to indict an entire people - millions of ordinary herders, traders, scholars, civil servants, professionals and families - for the crimes of armed gangs violates the most elementary principle of justice: guilt attaches to persons and acts, never to bloodlines. Emmanuel Kant taught that a moral maxim must be capable of universal application. The proposition that an ethnic group may be punished for crimes committed by individuals among it, if universalised, condemns every people - including those who promote it.

15. Hannah Arendt similarly warned of the danger of collective guilt as a mechanism through which demagogues transform populations into mobs. Expelling an Emir who adjudicates disputes peacefully, a Pension Clerk, a Civil Servant or a dawn Imam does not defeat a bandit. It merely inflicts suffering on the innocent as political theatre while the actual criminals remain in their forest camps.

16. Third is the futility of the project itself. History runs forward. Expulsion has never produced lasting peace. It produces refugees, counter-grievance and permanent conflict. The twentieth century is a graveyard of such experiments. The truth is that the Fulani are not a foreign army awaiting repatriation. They are Nigerians whose ancestors have lived on this soil for centuries. There is no “elsewhere” to which they can collectively be sent. Worse still, the logic of reversing two-four centuries-old settlements ultimately devours its own authors. No Nigerian community - none - germinated from the soil like the grass and therefore has a history entirely free of migration, domination, displacement or incorporation. Open that door and every grievance becomes a title deed to violence.

17. The vilification of Sheikh Usman dan Fodio further exposes the deeper objective: not merely correcting present injustices, but delegitimising a people’s historical existence. For whatever one’s verdict on the jihad of 1804, it belongs to the same broad historical category as the military expansion of the Oyo Empire, the wars of Kanem-Bornu, the campaigns of the Benin Kingdom, the conquests of Kwarrarafa, the Nupe wars of settlement, the Chamba campaigns and the Ijaw canoe war houses. To criminalise one historical founding while romanticising or ignoring others is not scholarship. It is propaganda masquerading as history. The Fulani people will not accept it; and none will accept it!

18. The wiser path follows from the social contract itself. Citizens surrender the right of private vengeance in exchange for equal protection under law. Nigeria’s Constitution embodies this covenant. The moment we create ethnic exceptions to citizenship, the covenant dissolves and the republic degenerates into competing fiefdoms. And like any other group, or even more, the Fulani a great fiefdom creators.

19. Therefore, pursue bandits as bandits and criminals as criminals - individually and under law. Let the Sultan, the Emirs, CAN, Chiefs, Obas, Northern and Southern ethnic and religious organizations use their moral authority to lower tensions. Let all these rift rats content creators and the so-called ethnic, religious and sectional groups propagating hate and prejudice desist from it. Let the authorities address all contending issues which lie at the heart of much of the conflict justly and through the ambers of the law. Let all land issues be resolved through rational ranching policy, water infrastructure, land administration and impartial adjudication - not through ethnic expulsion.

20. As Isaiah Berlin observed, the good society is not one without conflict, but one that channels conflict through institutions rather than blood. Every nation carries historical wounds. Civilization is measured not by the absence of conquest in its past, as virtually every nation on earth has experienced conquest, but by its capacity to transform grievance into justice and difference into shared destiny. Therefore, it is ridiculous for the anti-Fulani campaigners to ask a conquest-built nation to punish an entire people for having a history of conquest. This is not a way purify society but to dismember it. For the avoidance of doubt: the Fulani are Nigerians - as Nigerian as the Hausa, Kanuri, Igala, Nupe, Tiv, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, Ijaw, Bini, and every other Nigerian people.

21. There is no road back to an imagined age of ethnic purity, because no such past ever existed. There is only the road forward: one country, equal citizens, law instead of mob rule and neighbours, however different, choosing every day to live together in peace and tolerance. That choice is not weakness. It is the only strength that has ever held a nation together. And that is the only choice to hold Nigeria together.

Ardo, an author, businessman, politician, public affairs analyst writes from Abuja.

11/09/2026

APC guber candidate, Galadima condemns Dzangola killings, commiserates with victims

By Mohammed Ismail

The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Adamawa State, Ahmed Galadima Aminu, has condemned the deadly attack on Dzangola community in Gombi Local Government Area, describing the incident as deeply distressing and unacceptable.

Galadima, in a statement on the attack, expressed shock and deep concern over the reported assault by suspected Boko Haram insurgents on the community on Sunday, September 6, 2026, which reportedly claimed several lives, destroyed homes and businesses and left residents traumatised.

The Chairman of Gombi Local Government Area has confirmed that 12 people were killed and two others injured in the attack, while security personnel have been deployed to the affected community.

Galadima noted that rural communities in Gombi and other parts of the state had endured the devastating consequences of insurgency for far too long.

He commiserated with the families of the victims and the entire people of Dzangola and Gombi, praying for the repose of the souls of those killed and divine strength for their bereaved families.

“My heart goes out to the people of Dzangola at this very painful moment. The loss of innocent lives is devastating, and I extend my deepest condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones and to the entire community,” he said.

The APC candidate expressed particular concern over reports that a young girl was abducted during the attack, urging security agencies to intensify efforts to track down the perpetrators and secure her immediate and safe release.

Galadima called for an urgent and coordinated security response, urging the military, police, intelligence services and other relevant agencies to strengthen operations in Gombi and other vulnerable communities.

He said the frequency of attacks on rural communities had become unacceptable, stressing that residents could no longer be expected to confront heavily armed terrorists and criminal elements without adequate protection from the state.

According to him, the government must do more to restore the confidence of citizens living in areas exposed to insurgent attacks.

“Our people deserve to sleep in their homes without fear, cultivate their farms without anxiety and conduct their businesses without the constant threat of violence.

“The people of Dzangola and neighbouring communities need to see and feel the presence of government through effective security. We must restore their confidence that their lives and property are protected.”

Galadima also urged residents of vulnerable communities to remain vigilant and promptly report suspicious movements, unfamiliar persons and other activities capable of threatening public safety to security agencies, traditional institutions and community leaders.

He emphasised that the fight against terrorism could not be left solely to security agencies, arguing that defeating insurgency require a coordinated partnership among the military, police, intelligence agencies, government at all levels, traditional and religious leaders, community vigilantes and citizens.

The APC governorship candidate further appealed to humanitarian organisations, philanthropists, community leaders and other well-meaning Nigerians to come to the aid of families affected by the attack, particularly those who have lost their homes, businesses and sources of livelihood.

He called for the swift restoration of peace and security in Dzangola, Gombi and other communities affected by insurgency, stressing that the protection of lives and property must remain the foremost responsibility of government.

Galadima prayed for the repose of the victims and the safe recovery of the abducted girl, while urging all stakeholders to unite in the fight against terrorism and ensure that Adamawa remains a safe and peaceful home for its citizens.

11/09/2026

Galadima parleys Adamawa federal appointees in Abuja, unveils 'Adamawa rising' agenda

By Mohammed Ismail

The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Adamawa State, Ahmed Galadima Aminu, has intensified consultations ahead of the 2027 elections, engaging Federal Government appointees from the state in Abuja on his vision for the development of Adamawa.

The engagement, which followed the successful flag-off of his 2027 governorship campaign in Yola, provided an opportunity for Galadima to unveil his development blueprint, the “Adamawa Rising Agenda,” which he described as a strategic roadmap for consolidating the gains of the present administration while introducing fresh policies and programmes to accelerate the state’s development.

The candidate told the federal appointees that the agenda was anchored on the conviction that Adamawa required a broad-based partnership involving government, political leaders, professionals, technocrats, traditional institutions, youths, women and other critical stakeholders.

According to a statement by Adamu Sambo, the media aide to the governorship candidate, the blueprint was subjected to extensive scrutiny and constructive engagement by the federal appointees, who commended its comprehensive outlook and its potential to provide a clear development direction for the state.

Sambo noted that the appointees applauded Galadima for choosing to consult with Adamawa indigenes serving in the Federal Government, describing the gesture as a demonstration of humility, respect and willingness to listen to diverse perspectives.

The appointees said the decision to seek their views and cooperation showed that the candidate was prepared to run an inclusive administration in which experience and expertise from both the state and federal levels would be deployed in addressing Adamawa’s development challenges.

Galadima, however, stressed that the Abuja engagement was not merely about soliciting political support ahead of the 2027 elections.

According to him, the responsibility of building a prosperous and sustainable Adamawa transcends partisan politics and requires the collective contribution of citizens and stakeholders with the requisite experience, expertise, influence and goodwill.

He said his vision was to build bridges across political and professional divides and mobilise the collective strength of Adamawa people towards creating a more prosperous, peaceful, inclusive and development-oriented state.

“Adamawa Rising is a collective project, and everyone has a role to play,” the candidate said.

The federal appointees, according to the statement, assured Galadima of their determination to return to their respective constituencies and work for the success of the APC and its candidates in the 2027 general elections.

At the meeting, Galadima expressed appreciation to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for appointing indigenes of Adamawa State to key positions in the Federal Government.

He described the appointments as an honour to the state and recognition of the appointees’ records of service, dedication to national development and commitment to the growth of the APC.

The APC candidate also commended Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri for what he described as the “unprecedented transformation” recorded across the state under his administration.

Galadima particularly thanked the governor for expressing confidence in his capacity and competence to contribute to the next phase of Adamawa’s development.

He said the confidence reposed in him by the governor had imposed a responsibility which he would not take lightly.

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