In the span of a single week, Nigerians watched a former vice president dare a sitting president to release his personal records, a state governor call his rival's flagship economic promise something no treasury on earth could honour, and a law firm ask anti-graft investigators to reopen a corruption file old enough to vote. Somewhere in all of it, the actual business of governing 230 million people got lost.
This is not an argument for either side. Both camps are playing the same game: attack the man rather than the plan, and let recycled scandal or a well-timed jab at the opposition's affordability stand in for a real account of what either side would actually do differently. Atiku's team wants Nigerians to focus on Tinubu's discomfort over US records rather than explain the fiscal math behind reviving a fuel subsidy. Tinubu's allies would rather relitigate a 2006 EFCC file than engage seriously with why, three years into subsidy removal, millions of Nigerians still say they cannot afford to live.
Nigerians deserve a campaign fought on more than press statements and second-hand quotes from spokesmen. What does either side propose to do about food inflation still running above 20 percent year on year? About a security architecture that, however improved, still requires monthly briefings on hundreds of kidnap victims rescued? About a youth population that keeps hearing growth figures it does not feel in its pocket? These are the questions an electorate weighing a choice for 2027 actually needs answered.
None of this means personal conduct and past allegations are irrelevant; voters are entitled to weigh a candidate's record, including its contested parts, and some will reasonably see this week's exchanges as fair game rather than a distraction. But when an entire week's political conversation is consumed by mudslinging and dares, with barely a policy proposal debated on its merits, something has gone wrong with how this campaign is being run. Nigeria has fifteen months to get this right. It should not take fifteen more of this.
