Yesterday, Atiku. Today, Tinubu. Tomorrow, who knows?
A microphone has no permanent owner. The man holding it today may be holding it for somebody else tomorrow.
Segun Showunmi has given Nigerians another reason to examine the curious business of political loyalty in this country. On October 15, 2026, he urged Nigerians to support President Bola Tinubu’s re-election, declaring that “prosperity is around the corner.” He is now part of Tinubu’s presidential campaign communications team, helping to persuade Nigerians that the President deserves another four years.
There is a detail worth remembering. Showunmi was the spokesman for Atiku Abubakar’s presidential campaign in 2019. Daniel Bwala, who served as a spokesman for Atiku’s 2023 presidential campaign, is now Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communications.
If Nigerian politics were a church, these two would have some explaining to do about their conversion.
Yesterday, Atiku. Today, Tinubu. Tomorrow, who knows?
One can almost imagine the congregation watching as yesterday’s defenders of one presidential ambition arrive to preach the merits of another. The faces are familiar. The voices have not changed. Only the object of their persuasion has.
Of course, Showunmi and Bwala are free to change their minds. Nobody owns another man’s political allegiance forever. They can leave a party, embrace a former opponent and discover fresh reasons to support a politician they once challenged. That is their right.
But there is a difference between changing your mind and expecting the public to develop amnesia.
These men were not casual supporters arguing politics over drinks. They were campaign spokesmen. They stood before cameras, spoke to journalists, defended their principals and tried to persuade Nigerians to see presidential candidates through a particular lens. Their words were meant to influence public opinion in a contest for the highest office in the land.
Now the political scenery has changed, and the public is expected to receive their new message with the same confidence with which they delivered the old one.
Really?
What should Nigerians make of the arguments these men once advanced when they were working for Atiku? Were those criticisms sincere assessments of Tinubu and his politics? Were they merely ammunition in an election campaign? Did something happen to change their minds? And if they now believe Tinubu is the right man for Nigeria, what exactly has persuaded them?
These are not questions about personal loyalty to Atiku. They are questions about credibility. The men who once asked Nigerians to trust their judgment cannot reasonably object when Nigerians examine that judgment after they have changed camps.
Showunmi’s declaration that prosperity is around the corner makes the issue particularly interesting. Nigerians have spent years hearing explanations for their hardship, assurances that reforms will eventually pay off, and promises that the pain of today is the price of a better tomorrow.
Yet the market woman still calculates what she can afford before buying food. The worker still watches transport fares swallow a growing share of his salary. Parents still struggle with school fees, rent, electricity bills and the cost of keeping a household running. For millions of people, the corner called prosperity has become a destination announced repeatedly but never quite reached.
Showunmi is entitled to believe that Tinubu deserves another term. But he must do more than announce that better days are approaching. He should tell Nigerians what evidence supports his optimism, what improvements they should already be seeing, and when the promised prosperity will begin to make a difference in their lives.
A campaign spokesman can sell hope. He cannot demand that hardship be mistaken for progress simply because he has found a more powerful principal.
If Tinubu’s reforms are working, Showunmi should make the case. If the President’s policies have put Nigeria on a path to prosperity, let him explain the evidence and show how the benefits will reach ordinary households. If continuity is the answer, let him explain why Nigerians should endure another four years of the present administration rather than choose another direction.
The microphone gives him an audience. It does not give him immunity from questions.
Bwala’s journey raises an equally uncomfortable issue. Before joining Tinubu’s camp, he was a vocal critic of the President. After the 2023 election, he moved to Tinubu’s side and was appointed Special Adviser on Media and Public Communications in November 2024. He defended his new position by saying that he was as committed to Tinubu as he had been to Atiku during the campaign.
That explanation opens a much bigger question about political communication in Nigeria. If a spokesman can spend an election campaign arguing that one candidate is preferable to another, then cross over to the other candidate’s camp and begin making the opposite case, where does campaign duty end and personal conviction begin?
Perhaps Bwala sincerely reconsidered his position. Perhaps Showunmi has seen something in Tinubu’s leadership that he believes deserves support. People can change their minds for legitimate reasons. We do not need to invent sinister motives to ask them to explain themselves.
But if their old arguments were merely the professional obligations of campaign work, Nigerians should understand what that means. It would mean that some of the fiercest arguments presented to the public during an election may have been less about settled convictions than about the demands of the job.
That is hardly reassuring in a democracy where citizens depend, in part, on public debate to judge those seeking their votes.
And if those arguments reflected genuine convictions at the time, Nigerians are entitled to know what changed. A man who once spoke forcefully about a candidate’s failings should be able to explain why he now considers that candidate worthy of support. There is nothing shameful about admitting that new evidence has changed one’s mind. What undermines credibility is behaving as though the old position never existed.
The most disturbing metaphor for this political culture is prostitution,not as an attack on sex workers, who are not responsible for the failures of Nigerian democracy, but as an indictment of a political establishment where loyalty seems to have a price and conviction lasts only as long as the arrangement remains profitable.
Welcome to the Nigerian political brothel, where the occupants change rooms, the promises acquire new packaging, and yesterday’s sworn enemies discover that they have always had something in common.
Here, a man can spend yesterday explaining why a candidate must never be trusted, then appear tomorrow to explain why that same candidate deserves the nation’s confidence. The face is the same; only the political uniform has changed. The voice is familiar, the confidence undiminished, the microphone firmly in hand.
The politicians negotiate their arrangements. The public is left to wonder what, exactly, it was being sold in the first place.
And the cost of this political marketplace is not merely the embarrassment of watching familiar faces defend unfamiliar positions. It is the erosion of public trust. When political arguments appear to change with the fortunes of the people making them, citizens have reason to question whether they are hearing honest assessments of the country’s problems or simply the latest sales pitch from the latest campaign office.
The distinction matters. A political spokesman can defend a policy, explain a difficult decision, expose an opponent’s weaknesses or persuade voters to give a politician another chance. Those are powerful responsibilities. They should carry a corresponding obligation to explain major changes in position, especially when the same public is expected to accept the new argument as confidently as it accepted the old one.
Showunmi and Bwala need not apologise for leaving Atiku’s camp. They do, however, have an opportunity to demonstrate that their present positions rest on more than the convenience of political realignment. They can explain what they believe Tinubu has done right, address what he has done wrong, and make a credible case for why another term would serve Nigeria’s interests.
They should also be prepared to answer the questions their political histories invite. Not because they have forfeited their rights by changing sides, but because they once asked Nigerians to take their words seriously. That request does not expire when a new appointment letter arrives.
As 2027 approaches, the country will be crowded with people eager to explain why their preferred candidate deserves power. Some will have remained loyal to one political camp for decades. Others will have travelled through several parties, alliances and campaign offices before finding themselves where they are today. Voters should judge each argument on its merits, but they should not be expected to forget the history of the people making it.
Nigerians are not merely an audience to be entertained between elections, nor are they customers obliged to buy whatever a familiar salesman places before them. They have to live with the consequences of political decisions long after campaign slogans have faded and spokesmen have moved on to new assignments.
Showunmi can tell Nigerians that prosperity is around the corner. Bwala can defend the President’s record. Both men can campaign for Tinubu with all the eloquence they possess. But the public is entitled to place their present arguments beside their past ones and ask the question that neither a new title nor a new political uniform can make disappear:
If you were right then, what changed? And if you are right now, why should we believe you?
That is not persecution. It is accountability.
Showunmi and Bwala are free to make their case for Tinubu. Nigerians are free to listen, question them and decide for themselves. The men have changed political camps; the citizens have not surrendered their right to remember.
The microphone may belong to whoever is holding it. The judgment belongs to the people listening.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
08034861434
