Rally Stage Set as Subsidy Pain Gets Sold as Prosperity

"To those who say subsidy is coming back, it's a lie. Don't let them lie to you again. It is not going to come back." That's President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, speaking at Dutse Township Stadium in Jigawa State, shutting the door on any relief for people already squeezed by what critics say are higher transport and food costs. The crowd cheered. The people who pay at the pump and the market stall weren't asked.

Who Has the Power

The Dutse gathering was a campaign stop, and it came with the usual machinery. Supporters, party officials and political organisations filled the stadium, among them the Tinubu Movement for Sustainable Governance Foundation, popularly known as Tinubu Must Stay, or TMS. Its national leadership is headed by Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, who also happens to be director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and an indigene of Jigawa State. A government agency chief fronting a movement whose name is a slogan for keeping the president in office. Draw your own lines.

TMS Director of Special Duties Dr Usman Baita Elleman called the rally "very beautiful." He said: "People came out in their numbers to show solidarity with the President and the governor. From what we saw today, there is no doubt that President Tinubu enjoys enormous support in Jigawa State and across Northern Nigeria." Even Kubura Garba, the Kano-based writer whose opinion piece prompted this account, pushes back on that leap, noting that a rally's attendance cannot independently establish regional support.

Who Gets Crushed

Elleman did concede one thing. Petrol subsidy removal, he acknowledged, had imposed hardship. But he called the reforms necessary. "We are telling Nigerians the facts about these policies. Some of the decisions may be painful, but they are aimed at putting the country on a sustainable path," he said.

Painful for whom? The author lays out the split: advocates of removal argued subsidies encouraged inefficiency, while critics warned of higher transport and food costs. The ones warning about food costs are the ones who buy food. The ones defending the policy are the ones at the podium.

Tinubu pitched the future. "We have to think about the future of our children. The money must be invested in areas that will create prosperity and opportunities for all Nigerians," he said. He promised interest-free loans for farmers and mechanised farming service centres across the six geopolitical zones. "We have to invest in agriculture. There will be interest-free loans for farmers. Prosperity is coming. Food security will happen," he said. He also pointed to electricity, skills acquisition, youth empowerment, job creation, support for small and medium-sized enterprises and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), and said his administration was strengthening the operational capacity and welfare of security agencies.

Note the tense. Prosperity is coming. Food security will happen. The pain is now; the payoff lives in the next campaign promise.

What They're Calling Progress

Vice-President Kashim Shettima ran down the roads and rails: the Kano–Maiduguri Road, the Kano–Maradi railway and the Kwanar Danja–Hadejia Road. Garba's own test cuts against the brochure approach. Infrastructure, he writes, should be assessed through verifiable progress, timelines, expenditure transparency and community benefits. In other words, show the receipts.

Elleman said TMS intends to intensify grassroots mobilisation through policy sensitisation, community engagement and empowerment programmes for small-scale entrepreneurs. Mobilisation from above, sensitisation from above, empowerment handed down by the same outfit campaigning for the man handing it out.

The Election Trap

Garba frames the 2027 elections as a question of whether government policies improve the conditions under which Nigerians live, work, study and pursue their aspirations. He calls on the opposition to provide credible scrutiny and workable alternatives, and urges Nigerians to assess political claims against lived experience.

That last part is the only advice in the whole story that doesn't need a stadium, a party structure or a government salary behind it. Lived experience is what people in Kano and Jigawa already have. Whether anyone in power is listening to it is another matter.