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Ex- Vice President Atiku Abubakar has told President Bola Tinubu to stop complaining about President Muhammadu Buhari and his other predecessors for the country’s woes, saying an administration that continues to point at past governments more than three years into its tenure is, by its own conduct, admitting it has run out of ideas.

In a statement issued on Friday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the African Democratic Congress ADC presidential candidate said the Nigerian people are no longer interested in who caused the country’s problems, but who will solve them.

Atiku conceded that no serious person disputes that Tinubu inherited a difficult economy but insisted that governance cannot be reduced to a running commentary on the past.

He said, “The constitution did not swear President Tinubu into office to explain history. It swore him into office to change it. Every administration inherits problems. Great leaders are remembered for solving them, not for endlessly rehearsing them.”

He accused the administration of institutionalized fiscal recklessness and what he called one of the greatest appropriation scandals in the country’s history.

The former Vice President’s outburst was triggered by Tinubu’s recent claim that “prosperity is on the horizon” and that the quality of life for Nigerians is improving, a suggestion Atiku dismissed as a fantasy detached from reality.

“Mr President says prosperity is on the horizon. Nigerians are asking, ‘Whose horizon?’ Certainly not that of the market woman whose capital has been wiped out by inflation. Not that of the civil servant whose salary now expires before the month begins,” he said, adding that the president’s optimism also excluded manufacturers battling crushing energy costs, unemployed graduates, farming communities displaced by bandits, and families who have cut back on daily meals just to survive.

He also faulted Tinubu’s comparisons of Nigeria to China, saying the president had missed the point of that country’s economic transformation. “China did not become an economic superpower by complaining about the size of its population. It became prosperous because visionary leadership transformed that population into its greatest economic asset through sustained investment in manufacturing, infrastructure, education, technology, and export-led industrialisation,” he said, insisting that Nigeria’s youthful population was a strategic advantage rather than a burden.

He pledged that an Atiku administration would pursue aggressive investment in manufacturing, modern infrastructure, quality education, skills acquisition, agriculture and export-driven industries to unlock what he described as the country’s enormous productive capacity.

Atiku further criticized as insensitive any suggestion that Nigerians should tolerate present-day hardship because hunger existed in earlier decades. “Nobody ‘elected’ Tinubu to eliminate the hunger of 1940. Nigerians ‘elected’ him to confront the hunger of today. The fact that previous generations endured hardship is not a licence to deepen the suffering of the present generation,” he said.

He maintained that hope could not be manufactured through speeches but must be earned through policies that translate into tangible improvements in people’s lives.

Urging the president to step away from official briefings and choreographed public appearances to engage with everyday realities, Atiku said the Nigeria described by Tinubu simply does not exist outside official rhetoric.

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The football world governing body FIFA is scrapping a controversial plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors after a fierce backlash from several of the world’s continental federations, and a threat from Europe to boycott future tournaments if the plan went through.

“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said on Friday.

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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will on Saturday, August 1, 2026, publish the particulars of all presidential and National Assembly candidates contesting the 2027 general election for public inspection at its offices across the country.

The publication of the candidates’ details, contained in Form EC9, is in compliance with Section 29(3) of the Electoral Act, 2026, which requires the commission to make the personal particulars of nominated candidates available for public scrutiny within 21 days of receiving them.

Political parties concluded the online submission of the names, personal particulars and other required documents for their presidential and National Assembly candidates on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, after INEC granted a 72-hour extension to the original deadline. ExecutiveBranch

Under the commission’s revised timetable, nominations for presidential and National Assembly candidates were initially scheduled to be submitted between June 27 and July 11, 2026.

Section 29(1) of the Electoral Act, 2026, requires political parties to submit Forms EC9, EC9A, EC9B, EC9C, EC9D and EC9E, containing the names and personal particulars of their nominated presidential and National Assembly candidates, not later than 120 days before the election.

Speaking on whether the 72-hour extension would affect the publication date, INEC Deputy Director of Publicity, Wilfred Osilama Ifogah, said he did not expect any change, although he stressed that he was expressing a personal opinion rather than the commission’s official position.

“I doubt. It might not necessarily affect it. It’s just for the Commission to put the information together and submit it. This is my opinion. I’m not talking officially. When it gets to the time, you will see whether the Commission will publish it or not,” he said.

Meanwhile, the online submission of nominations for governorship and State Houses of Assembly candidates, which commenced on July 18, will continue until August 8, 2026.

INEC has scheduled August 29, 2026, for the publication of the personal particulars of governorship and State House of Assembly candidates through Form EC9.

The commission had earlier conducted party primaries for all elective positions between April 23 and May 30, 2026.

According to INEC’s election timetable, the presidential and National Assembly elections will hold on January 16, 2027, while the governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections are scheduled for February 6, 2027