Bola @officialABAT, your campaign spokesman has admitted that ministers paid billions in bribes to secure their appointments. You appointed them, so who received the money? Nigerians deserve names, not silence. Your government’s reckless decisions have driven the cost-of-living crisis. And when you withhold funds from ministries because you distrust your own ministers, Nigerians are left paying for a government that has abandoned them. -AA

“INEC’s conduct has opened the door to manipulation and left Nigerians unable to check who has been added, who has been removed and whether their own names remain on the register. That door must be shut now. Publish the register by local government, area council and ward. Explain the conflicting dates. Give voters the full opportunity the law provides to challenge false entries and restore omitted names. Anything less is an assault on the credibility of the 2027 election. “I call on Nigeria’s international partners, election observers and democratic institutions to press INEC publicly to comply with the law. Do not wait until election day to ask whether this contest is credible. Demand access to the voters’ register now. Ask how every ballot paper will be authenticated. Transparency before the vote is as essential as scrutiny of the results afterward. “The right to vote begins with the right to know that your name is on the list. INEC must stop hiding behind a blank screen. Publish the register. Open it to scrutiny. Answer the country.” Signed: Phrank Shaibu Director, Strategic Communication African Democratic Congress Presidential Campaign Council 22 October 2026

TINUBU AND @inecnigeria CANNOT HIDE 103 MILLION NAMES AND EXPECT NIGERIANS TO TRUST THE 2027 ELECTION — ATIKU Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has demanded the immediate publication of the preliminary voters’ register, warning that its absence from INEC’s online display during the announced October 9 to 15 scrutiny period raises grave questions about the integrity of the 2027 election. In a statement issued by Phrank Shaibu, Director of Strategic Communication of the ADC Presidential Campaign Council, Atiku said: “INEC has announced more than 103 million registered voters. Nigerians went to its portal to inspect the names and found an empty page. That is an outrage. A figure cannot answer an objection. A press announcement cannot tell a voter whether her name has been omitted. Show Nigerians the register. “I cannot recall a more brazen invitation to distrust the voter register. INEC announced a seven-day exercise and then failed to make the register available on the portal provided for public scrutiny. Section 19(1) of the Electoral Act 2026 requires display at registration areas and online. INEC does not get to treat that requirement as optional. “Worse still, INEC’s chairman reportedly said on October 5 that the public display had already been completed. Nigerians were subsequently told it would take place from October 9 to 15. Which statement is true? Where was the register published? For seven full days, or for no days at all? INEC must produce the dates, the links and the records of access. “Section 63(2) of the Electoral Act 2026 permits a returning officer to count a ballot paper without INEC’s official mark if satisfied that it came from a book supplied to the polling unit. What evidence will establish that origin? Who will verify it, and how will parties challenge a false claim? Nigerians cannot be denied access to the voters’ register before election day and then be asked to accept unmarked ballot papers after voting. INEC must set out enforceable safeguards against counterfeit ballots, and the National Assembly must close any loophole that leaves the authenticity of a vote to an officer’s unsupported assurance.” To date, INEC has yet to respond to inquiries about the identity of the companies awarded contracts to print sensitive election materials. The ADC and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, are stakeholders in the upcoming presidential election and thus have the right to demand transparency from the electoral umpire about the protocols that will guide the election’s credibility. “Let me address Bola Tinubu directly: Nigerians are struggling to put food on the table, and too many are afraid for their lives and livelihoods. You will not add an unseen voters’ register to their suffering and call it a route to another four years in office. “You must face the people whose lives have become more expensive and less secure under your watch. You cannot hide their names from scrutiny and then ask them to trust the election conducted with that list. Nigerians have the right to inspect the register, challenge false entries and correct omissions. If that right is denied, we will challenge it in the open and through every lawful means available.

I have watched Yusuf Aliyu’s video repeatedly, and each time, my heart breaks. A child with such intelligence, clarity and confidence should be in a classroom building his future—not struggling for survival in a community surrounded by gold but buried in poverty. I cannot look at him and see an “illegal miner.” I see a Nigerian child failed by the country that should have protected him. I see brilliance trapped by poverty and enormous promise abandoned by leadership. I appeal specifically for his safety. His courage must not expose him or his family to intimidation or retaliation. I am prepared to support his education and ensure that the brilliance we have witnessed is not buried by poverty. Any effort to reach him must be handled responsibly through his family and appropriate child-protection channels. But this video raises a question that should trouble the conscience of every Nigerian: how can a community sitting upon gold remain so poor that it cannot educate its children? How can its wealth leave the soil while hunger and deprivation remain in its homes? This is an indictment of the Tinubu administration. The Federal Government controls Nigeria’s mineral resources, yet the communities producing that wealth remain without schools, opportunities or protection. The contrast is revealing. President Buhari established PAGMI to register, train and integrate artisanal miners into the formal economy, with Niger State included among its intervention states. Tinubu inherited that framework but has met these vulnerable citizens with raids, detention and the label “illegal miners.” Buhari saw people to formalise. Tinubu sees poor people to criminalise. This boy is evidence against the Tinubu government. His intelligence exposes the opportunities it has failed to provide. His poverty exposes the injustice of Nigeria’s mining economy. His presence at that site exposes an administration that has left brilliant children without a ladder out of deprivation. The government must explain what became of PAGMI in Niger State and how 37 Nigerians died in the custody of a federal agency. Calling them “illegal miners” cannot erase their humanity or excuse their deaths. As a father, a grandfather and a Nigerian, I refuse to look away. I will continue to speak for these children because their lives matter, their dreams matter and their future belongs to Nigeria. The gold beneath their community should build classrooms and livelihoods, not graves. —AA