Coalition Manipulation Feedback: Interesting Twist Of Mental Game

By Shehu Bashir, Esq.

I have always argued that life is an irony. Many times, it is not what you get that you planned for. Sometimes, you plan with all human schemings and assurances of a certain outcome, but what comes after such action may be beyond your imagination. It may come positive or negative, depending on third-party play or divine intervention. Certainty of an action is never the certainty of a reaction.

I remember in 2022, in the build-up to the 2023 general elections, the Naira redesign was to achieve just one goal — stopping Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu from becoming the President.

God Almighty in His infinite mercy, who gives power to whom He wants and takes it from whoever decides otherwise, turned the deliberate mischief of naira redesigning and hoarding into a blessing in disguise for Tinubu. Asiwaju got the sympathy of many people of conscience who thought he did not deserve to suffer such conspiracy and betrayal. Nigerians voted for him.

Fast forward to 2025 — just a few days into what would have been a tsunamic plan with earthquake expectation by the opposition — they came up with a well-planned conspiracy with the birth of a coalition. The campaign was sophisticated, and it was planted on sentiment and emotion, bedding on the vulnerabilities of a few Nigerians and the gullibility of many more. Their hope was to seduce Nigerians into false love for them and forced hate against Tinubu.

The God of nature doesn’t take human opinion to determine the true course of justice. He knows everybody, and He directs the path of justice. Since that open declaration against Tinubu, Nigerians of rational minds have been tackling and intellectually challenging the so-called coalition to provide convincing reasons on why they are better off.

Trust Nigerians. Notwithstanding the tendentious manipulations by the politicians to win our sentiments, we still have our sense of reasoning and sense of argument. Then Nigerians began to query the truthfulness of their agenda:

1. As a coalition, what are your objectives to wanting Nigerians to trust you with our next votes?
2. As a coalition, whose members are about 70% immediate political office holders who left office just a few months back, but are disgruntled because some of you lost out in current political appointment considerations — what exactly did you not do right then that you want to do correctly now? When you had the opportunity, why did you fail to turn Nigeria into Venice?
3. As a coalition seeking to replace the current administration, having been in power for over 24 years, what particular policy are you hoping to make to better the lives of Nigerians now — and why didn’t you do it then when you had the opportunity?
4. As a coalition, made up of former governors, ministers, and CEOs of government agencies, what are your indelible legacies? How come you were not able to turn those offices you held into the paradise you are now craving to turn Nigeria into?
5. As a coalition, a larger percentage of you were part of the problems that drove Nigeria into the gully of this situation we are now in — selling Nigerian assets to cronies at cheaper prices; threatening to kill the winner of a lawfully conducted election; sponsoring ethnic divisionism; using your wife to embezzle billions of naira every month on phony contracts; supporting proscribed terrorist organizations to kill innocent people; investing state money in your family-owned companies; frustrating the fight against corruption and converting government’s recovered assets to personal use — how do we trust that you will not do worse than you did when you are trusted again with the executive power of the C-in-C?
6. As a coalition, the question has been asked by Nigerians: Assuming you were given the opportunity of presidential power (God forbid), what will you do differently on subsidy removal, naira floating, infrastructural development, tax reform (which has been yielding positive results), and many other progressive policies that this administration has taken?

Are you going to reverse these policies or not? And if not, what will you do differently to replace them?

Now, the stone that they threw at Tinubu’s flying bird has turned into a diamond bracelet. Rather than Nigerians subjectively hating the President, many reasonable people have been objectively liking him.

In fact, there has been a schism within their ranks, with some joining the campaign that it is better for Nigerians to endure the current challenges of the reform being carried out by the current administration than to go back to Egypt — to drown in the ocean of liars, hypocrites, pretenders, and corrupt people.

The mental game they aimed to play — to set the people against the government of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu — has turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him.

Nigerians are not buying the dummy of lies and fabrications from people who are engaged in a marriage of inconvenience only aimed at grabbing power. There is no love lost amongst them. They are just pretending to be one and the same — till the struggle for personal advantage will put them asunder.

Leave tomorrow for God.
Asiwaju for President 2027.

GOD IS HERE.