Why Nigeria Won’t Go Back to the Years of the Locusts
The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) considers it imperative to once again remind Nigerians that our nation has irreversibly moved beyond the dark, wasteful, and inglorious era that history will forever remember as the Years of the Locusts.
As the 2027 electoral season gradually comes into view, certain familiar political actors, now huddled under the banner of the ADC, have once again emerged from the shadows, draped in borrowed robes of reform and speaking in the hollow language of redemption. Nigerians must not be deceived by this tired masquerade.
Before anyone takes seriously the sanctimonious posturing of the opposition, it is only proper to rigorously interrogate the public service records and democratic credentials of the main protagonists now seeking to market themselves as national saviours.
These are not men unfamiliar with power.
These are not voices from the margins.
These are not reformers forged outside the corridors of influence.
They are, in fact, the very old hands who for decades occupied the highest offices in the land as governors, speakers, ministers, senators, vice presidents, and party chieftains. They have sat at the tables of power, presided over vast resources, and wielded enormous constitutional authority. The unavoidable question, therefore, is simple and devastating: what exactly did they do with the opportunities history handed to them?
Put together, they wasted decades of our life as a nation.
Where was this newfound patriotism when they held office?
Where was this moral outrage when public institutions were weakened?
Where was this democratic fervour when the nation was being burdened by policy drift, fiscal indiscipline, and leadership inertia?
It is the height of political hypocrisy for those who helped create yesterday’s failures to now present themselves as the cure for the very disease they incubated.
Nigeria knows these protagonists too well.
They are the perennial merchants of power, serial defectors in search of relevance, and political nomads whose only enduring ideology is personal ambition. Having exhausted their usefulness in previous political platforms, they now seek refuge in yet another acronym, hoping that Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia.
What is being paraded as an opposition coalition is nothing more than a conclave of displaced power brokers and frustrated office seekers united by desperation rather than vision, by grievance rather than principle, and by ambition rather than patriotism.
Even more troubling is the absence of democratic credibility within their own ranks. A group that cannot inspire internal consensus without rancour, intrigue, and factional manoeuvring has no moral standing to preach democracy to Nigerians. Their history is littered with opportunistic alliances, expedient defections, and ideological shapelessness.
Nigeria has left them behind.
Our country has moved beyond the old politics of entitlement, elite rotation, and cynical power recycling. The Nigerian people are wiser, more discerning, and far less susceptible to the empty theatrics of recycled political veterans masquerading as change agents.
Under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the country is undergoing bold and necessary reforms designed to confront long-standing structural distortions. These reforms may be difficult, but they are courageous, purposeful, and future-facing. They stand in sharp contrast to the years when many of today’s opposition protagonists occupied strategic offices yet left little more than excuses, evasions, and unfulfilled promises in their wake.
Let it be said without equivocation: 2027 will not be a pathway back to regression.
Nigeria will not return to the era of squandered opportunities.
Nigeria will not return to policy somersaults.
Nigeria will not return to leadership by rhetoric and ruinous experimentation.
Nigeria will not return to the years of the locusts.
And let the opposition be under no illusion: subtle blackmail, arm-twisting tactics, political brinkmanship, and mercenary rhetoric will not confer power on a coalition of yesterday’s men. Power is earned through vision, credibility, and the trust of the people – it is never served à la carte to failed actors seeking a second bite at history.
2027 will be the ultimate moment of democratic reckoning – the season that separates genuine leadership from recycled ambition, substance from sloganeering, and nation-builders from political opportunists.
No one owes the opposition a rescue from its self-inflicted descent into irrelevance. If anything, the Nigerian people are now witnesses to what can only be described as an unstoppable march toward political perdition and collective self-harvest of failed legacies.
History has moved on.
Nigeria has moved on.
The people have moved on.
And those who squandered yesterday will not be entrusted with tomorrow.
The years of the locusts are gone forever – and by the grace of the Nigerian electorate, they shall remain buried in the graveyard of failed political experiments.
Mogaji (Hon) Seye Oladejo
Lagos APC Spokesman
20/04/26.
