by Mohammed Bello Doka
18 October, 2026.
I've always maintained that if betrayal had a physical address, it would be located somewhere between Bourdillon and Aso Villa. Today's episode is a warning to those with ears. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's edition of Sarcastic Sunday with Mohammed Bello Doka, where we study Nigeria's political gymnastics sarcastically laced with humor, because doing otherwise will choke us to death. Again, this week is another deep dive into the freshly minted graves in Tinubu's endless cemetery of political betrayals.
Let us begin with the roll call of the missing. The 2027 campaign council list came out, and lo and behold, the names that built the house were locked outside the gate. Simon Lalong, the man who was Director-General in 2023, the general who marshalled the troops from state to state, is nowhere to be found. Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser, who once served as Director of Stakeholders Relations, is absent. Femi Fani-Kayode, the rhetorical bulldozer who defended the ticket with fire and brimstone, is not on the list. Reno Omokri, the online warrior who spent every waking hour battling trolls for this administration, is equally missing. Mohammed Badaru, the North Regional Coordinating Chairman in 2023, has been quietly swept aside.
And let us not forget what these people actually sacrificed. FFK was detained multiple times as Director of Special Projects in the 2023 presidential campaign council, hauled in by the military and multiple security agencies, all because of Tinubu. He used his own resources to fund many projects during that campaign, as did many others who are now watching their names disappear from lists. Reno Omokri, for his part, was baptised and convinced that supporting Tinubu would wash away his sins, with promises of riches and appointments dangled before him. Ask yourself a simple question: why has he not resumed his ambassadorial posting? The appointment was announced, the fanfare was loud, and yet the man is still waiting. Was the baptism for nothing, or is the forgiveness of sins now subject to a revised list? Isah Pantami hosted Tinubu's meetings multiple times in his own home ahead of the campaign, and he and others were the major pushers of the Muslim-Muslim ticket. El-Rufai's contributions are the most visible today, and yet he has been kept under Tinubu's cage, a lion on a leash. These are the people who built the house. Now they are standing outside it, wondering if the gatekeeper even remembers their faces.
So here is a chilling question for every data boy and data girl out there, typing away on your phones, defending the indefensible, trending hashtags for free. If Tinubu can abandon Lalong, Ribadu, FFK, Omokri, Badaru, Pantami, El-Rufai, and reduce Keyamo to a benchwarmer, what exactly is your own faith? What is your insurance policy? Where is your name on any list? Are you guys simply dumb or charmed? You can be a data boy and still have some sense. It won't kill you.
And while you are at it, tell your bosses who are promising you manna, honey, and milk after the election to check their own names first. Are they even sure of their place in the scheme of things? Can they guarantee they will not be the next name quietly deleted from a revised list? The people promising you heaven are not sure of their own seat at the table.
Let me be categorically clear: being in APC will aid you nothing if you do not belong to the renewed cult of Tinubu, his chosen family, and a very few people—less than twenty-four. Any other person is expendable. You can carry the party on your head from ward to ward, you can defend every policy on Twitter from morning till night, but when the list is printed, your name will be missing. The cemetery of political betrayals has unlimited plots. And to those data boys who mock me, who think I am bitter because I am not on any list, let me borrow from the legendary Bob Marley and ask you a simple question: are you satisfied with the life you are living? I am nobody's slave. Look into your own condition before you look into mine.
Now, some of you data boys are already sharpening your pens, ready to absolve the President of all blame. You will say he did not know, he was not informed, the list was compiled by enemies. Explain then the betrayal in Osun. Explain how Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party—the same party your people accused of killing over forty APC members in the run-up to the governorship election—was handed the coordinator role for Tinubu's campaign. Explain how the APC members who survived that violence, who buried their colleagues, are now expected to take orders from the man whose party they say shed their blood. Explain how Gboyega Oyetola, the APC leader in Osun, was excluded from the list entirely. Is that not a masterpiece of betrayal?
Explain Anambra, where Soludo of APGA is the coordinator, while APC members in the state are left to wonder if their own party even remembers they exist. Explain Rivers and the FCT, where Wike holds the structure, and Fubara—the man who was lured into the APC with promises—was humiliated, disqualified, and discarded like a used tissue. People are being lured into the APC with the promise of freedom, but in reality, they are running into a hostage situation. They cannot talk, they cannot complain, they can only sweat and curse silently. Who cares about hostages, by the way?
Ask every APC leader who is not in the renewed cult to examine their head and search their conscience. Will they be proud when the history of their captivity is finally brought to the fore? Will they be proud before their unborn grandchildren? History is as cruel as it is unforgiving. What is their defense?
Nigeria is gradually slipping into a full-blown dictatorship, and in this dictatorship, no one will be free except the head. Do everything possible to rescue the nation, and above all, rescue yourselves from the clutches of the monster you know is devouring you. Nigeria's democracy must be saved, people's freedom of association must be saved, and above all, human dignity must be preserved.
This isn't politics, where betrayal and backstabbing are normalized. Politics used to be where you work and you get rewarded—not uncertainty, not the more you work the less you are remembered.
Some people will say they have invested too much in this government to leave now. So you cannot leave even when there is no clear path ahead? Even when uncertainty has the better part of you? Even when you are sure you have been relegated to the abandoned cemetery of political betrayals? Then what kind of investor are you, willingly and consciously toiling toward your own captivity, knowing full well that heads you lose, tails they win?
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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Sarcastic Sunday