Atiku to Tinubu: Stop governing by obituary statements

Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has lambasted President Bola Tinubu for issuing what he called “empty threats” and “obituary statements” in response to the spate of killings and abductions in the country.

In a statement issued by Phrank Shaibu, his media aide on public communication, Atiku condemned the attacks, describing them as “further proof that Nigeria is bleeding under a government that has reduced leadership to post-tragedy press statements”.

Atiku said the continued bloodshed across the country is not merely a breakdown of security but a frightening collapse of leadership at the highest level.

“At a time when armed criminals are abducting schoolchildren, slaughtering innocent citizens, and turning communities into graveyards, President Tinubu’s response remains the same tired ritual: condemn the killings, threaten that the perpetrators will face the ‘full wrath of the law,’ and then wait for the next massacre.

“Nigerians have heard this script too many times. It has become painfully predictable and utterly meaningless. President Tinubu must stop governing by obituary statements.

“Enough of the recycled outrage. Enough of the empty threats. Nigerians are dying, and this government keeps responding with press releases.”

Atiku argued that a president who only finds his voice after blood has been spilled is not leading but presiding over failure.

“The horrifying abduction in Ogbomoso and the gruesome killings in Katsina are not isolated incidents.

“They are part of a grim national pattern in which criminals operate with terrifying confidence because they no longer fear the Nigerian state.

“When terrorists can invade schools, abduct children and teachers, butcher pregnant women, sack entire communities, and disappear without consequence, it is because the authority of the state has collapsed”.

Reacting to the Oyo incident, Tinubu on Monday said the bandits behind the Ogbomoso school abduction would face the full wrath of the law.

However, Abubakar criticised the president’s response, asking, “What comfort is ‘the full wrath of the law’ to families already burying their loved ones?”

“What solace is another presidential statement to parents now terrified that sending their children to school may be a death sentence?

“Even more disturbing are reports suggesting deliberate attempts to suppress images and documentation of these atrocities from reaching the Nigerian public.”

Abubakar maintained that “if the government is indeed more interested in censoring evidence of mass killings than in preventing the killings themselves, then that is not merely incompetence, but cruelty of the highest order.”

According to him, no serious government hides the blood of its citizens to protect political optics.

“A government that cannot protect the living but seeks to censor evidence of their deaths has lost every moral right to govern.

“This is no longer just a security failure. It is a moral failure. A leadership failure. A national disgrace.”

He said Nigerians deserve more than performative outrage and ceremonial condolences.

“They deserve a government that can protect lives, defend communities, and act before tragedy strikes — not one that merely reacts after the damage is done,” he said.