23 May, 2026.
Welcome to this week's edition of Sarcastic Sunday with Mohammed Bello Doka where we study Nigeria's political gymnastics sarcastically because doing otherwise will choke us to death. Here we smile so we don't cry not because things are funny but because we have got no options. And today's edition is titled Sarcastic Sunday: 2027 Why A Vote for Tinubu is a Vote for Bello Turji.
The campaign for 2027 has not officially begun, but the continuity argument is already being test-marketed by people who believe Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, according to his supporters who likely live in a bunker without news access, deserves more time. They say he inherited a broken country. How thoughtful. As if every president since 1999 did not inherit a broken country. They say the structural problems of Nigeria cannot be fixed in one term. Perhaps not, but one would expect at least an attempt to fix something. They say continuity is the safer choice for a nation already drowning in crisis. That is like telling a man who is drowning that he should stay in the water because changing positions might get him wet. On the surface, that argument sounds almost reasonable until you remember you are in Nigeria where nothing is reasonable. The most honest way to put it is this. A vote for Tinubu in 2027 is not a vote for stability or progress. It is a vote for Bello Turji. Yes, that Bello Turji. The one with the AK-47. The one who sends video messages like he is running for office. That one.
For those who have been paying attention between episodes of their favourite soap operas, Bello Turji is not just a bandit. He is the most enduring symbol of Nigeria's security collapse in the North-West, a title no one asked for but he has earned anyway. Turji operates freely across Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, and Niger states as if someone gave him a map and a visa. He has killed security personnel, abducted civilians in bulk like wholesale shopping, and imposed taxes on farming communities because apparently the government does not want that revenue. In June 2024, his fighters ambushed a military convoy and reportedly killed dozens of soldiers. In January 2026, he released a video boasting of kidnapping forty people from one community. Congratulations to him, we suppose. He remains at large. He mocks the state regularly, which is now a national pastime. And he has survived every military operation launched against him since before Tinubu took office. At this point, Turji has better job security than most civil servants.
What makes Turji the ideal metaphor for this discussion is not merely his crimes. It is the fact that his continued existence as a free man represents a systemic failure that Tinubu has not only failed to fix but has arguably deepened while telling us how hard he is trying. According to the International Organization for Migration, armed attacks in Sokoto State alone in January 2026 displaced 17,797 individuals from 2,871 households. Nearly ten thousand of those displaced were children. That is not a crisis. That is a humanitarian catastrophe wearing a mask and collecting taxes. This is not happening in a war zone far from the capital. This is happening in Nigeria, under the watch of a president whose supporters are asking for more time. More time for what exactly? For Turji to release a music video?
The Tinubu administration's response to this catastrophe has followed a predictable pattern that any student of Nigerian politics could have written in their sleep. When banditry spikes, the president blames someone else. First it is his political enemies, a shadowy cabal that apparently sabotages everything including the morning sunrise. Then it is the Northern governors, who are told to do more even though the military answers to the commander-in-chief who happens to be sitting in Aso Rock. Then it is the subsidy cabal, with the strange argument that removing petrol subsidies is the real solution to banditry. Because nothing says fighting bandits like increasing fuel prices. Then it is past administrations, especially Muhammadu Buhari, as if two years of Tinubu have contributed absolutely nothing to the situation. The blame game is relentless, like a toddler who refuses to admit he broke the vase. The one person who never appears on the list of responsible parties is the man sitting in Aso Rock. What a coincidence.
Even more alarming is the administration's approach to the media, which is to treat journalists like naughty children who need to be told what not to see. The Independent Media and Policy Initiative, a group with ties to government thinking, recently argued that journalists should be more circumspect in reporting security challenges. The reasoning is that too much attention on bandits weakens troop morale. Let us sit with that logic for a moment. The problem, according to this thinking, is not the bandits who are killing people. The problem is the journalists who report that bandits are killing people. That is like blaming a thermometer for a fever. This same logic was deployed by the Buhari administration when Lai Mohammed begged the press to focus on successes rather than daily abductions. Tinubu's team has simply recycled the script, perhaps adding a few spelling errors for originality.
Factual data from the first quarter of 2024 shows that 2,583 Nigerians were killed in bandit attacks and 2,164 were abducted within just three months. Those figures have since risen because of course they have. Yet the government's primary response has been narrative management rather than operational effectiveness. In plain English, they have spent more energy trying to convince you that the problem is not that bad than actually solving the problem. According to budget tracking platforms such as BudgIT, only a fraction of allocated security equipment funds has actually been disbursed. The military continues to announce kinetic offensives and destroyed camps, but Bello Turji remains alive, unarrested, and unapologetic. He continues to release videos. He continues to issue threats. He continues to collect taxes from helpless communities. One might start to wonder who actually runs the North-West. The man in Aso Rock or the man in the forest with the better PR team.
There is also the uncomfortable question of protection that no one in government wants to answer. Katsina State Governor Dikko Radda has openly suggested that powerful figures are shielding bandits. A Nigerien military officer went further in a viral video, warning Turji to stay away from Niger because unlike Nigeria, Niger does not protect bandits. Read that again. A neighbouring country has better security standards for bandits than we do. The officer alleged that Turji enjoys protection from Nigerian authorities. No investigation has been launched. No arrests have been made. The government has remained silent. That silence is itself a statement, and the statement is that they have nothing to say because saying something might require admitting something.
When you combine all of this, the meaning of a Tinubu vote becomes clear enough that even a child could explain it. Continuity under Tinubu means continuity of a security approach that has failed to neutralize a single major bandit kingpin. It means continuity of a blame game that distracts from executive responsibility while the president points fingers like a traffic warden. It means continuity of propaganda that asks journalists to look away while citizens die because looking away is free and drones are expensive. It means continuity of underfunding the very equipment soldiers need to fight while bandits drive around in vehicles that would make a minister jealous. It means continuity of a political culture where the president is never at fault. It is always the cabal, the governors, the smugglers, the past leaders, the weather, the phase of the moon.
The continuity argument being sold by Tinubu's supporters is tempting precisely because it sounds mature and patient. Do not change leaders in the middle of a crisis, they say. But that argument assumes that the current leader is managing the crisis rather than enabling it. When a bandit like Bello Turji operates for years without consequence, when thousands are displaced in a single month, when the response to bloodshed is to blame northern governors or past presidents, that is not management. That is negligence dressed in agbada and speaking in proverbs. And a vote for negligence is a vote for the consequences of negligence. The consequences have names. One of them is Bello Turji.
Turji is the metaphor because he represents every bandit, every kidnapper, every terrorist who has discovered that the Nigerian state under Tinubu lacks the will, the capacity, or the honesty to stop them. He represents the displaced children of Sokoto who now know the name of a bandit better than the name of their senator. He represents the farmers of Zamfara who pay taxes to criminals because the criminals showed up and the government did not. He represents the soldiers who die with inadequate equipment while politicians travel in convoys that could fund a regiment. He represents a country where the government has normalized failure to the point where asking for more time is considered a reasonable political strategy.
A vote for Tinubu in 2027 will not be a vote for renewed hope. It will be a vote for the status quo. It will be a vote for a president who blames everyone but himself, a skill that would be impressive if it were not so tragic. It will be a vote for a media environment where truth is sacrificed for morale, as if lying to the public makes bullets bounce off soldiers. It will be a vote for underfunded troops and overfunded propaganda, for press releases that celebrate destroyed camps and videos of bandits that prove the camps were rebuilt. It will be a vote for Bello Turji, not because Tinubu directly supports banditry, but because his inaction, his blame-shifting, and his refusal to own the crisis have allowed Turji to thrive. And in politics, allowing evil to flourish is indistinguishable from endorsing it. The only difference is the vocabulary.
The continuity merchants will keep selling their product. They will keep telling you to wait, to be patient, to give more time. But the dead cannot wait. The displaced cannot be patient. The communities paying bandit taxes cannot afford more time. In 2027, every Nigerian who believes the state has a duty to protect its citizens must vote as if their life depends on it. Because in the North-West right now, it actually does. The rest of the country is just a few bandit breakthroughs away from joining them.
This has been Sarcastic Sunday with Mohammed Bello Doka. Keep smiling. We have no other choice. If we had a choice, we would probably choose to live in a country where this article was not necessary. But here we are. Smiling through the tears. See you next week.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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