EXPOSED: Why Atiku Is Hiding Behind Potiskum Market Instead Of Holding A Real Rally In Damaturu

While genuine presidential campaigns stage proper state rallies in capital cities where the people and the media can see the true strength of a candidate, Atiku Abubakar has chosen a different path in Yobe.

Today, Sunday, 15 November, he is not going to Damaturu, the state capital and the natural venue for any serious state-level outing. He is heading to Potiskum.

The reason is not logistics or security. It is arithmetic, optics and a little political stage management.

Atiku’s handlers know the numbers no longer add up. After the court removed him from the ADC ticket, the organisational structure that once moved people on his behalf has thinned. Filling a proper venue in Damaturu has become uncertain, so the plan has shifted to Potiskum on a Sunday, one of its two weekly market days.

Potiskum hosts one of the largest cattle and grain markets in West Africa. Every Sunday and Wednesday, tens of thousands of traders, buyers, herders and travellers from across the North and beyond gather there for business, not politics. Cows are priced, millet is measured, lorries are loaded. The crowd is already there before any politician arrives.

The calculation is simple: park the convoy near the market, fly a drone over the natural sea of people carrying out their weekly trade, and later push the footage on social media as evidence of a “massive campaign crowd.” Innocent traders negotiating prices become, in the edit, cheering supporters.

Apparently, when your political base has become as scarce as a quiet day at Potiskum market, the next best thing is to borrow somebody else’s crowd.

It is an old, low-cost trick. It does not require mobilisation, structure or genuine enthusiasm. It only requires a camera angle, a drone and the right caption.

Atiku may have lost the ticket, but he has clearly not lost the ability to turn a cattle market into a campaign stadium. The only problem is that cows, goats, grains and traders do not vote because they appeared in the background of a drone video.

From the legal contest over the party ticket to the attempt to borrow a weekly market as a rally, the pattern has been consistent: substitute what is real with what can be staged. Damaturu was avoided because a real venue would have exposed the gap between the claim and the turnout. Potiskum market on Sunday was chosen because that gap can be hidden within the ordinary business of the day.

Arewa has seen these tactics before. The difference this time is that more people are watching and can tell the difference between a capital-city rally and a market-day photo opportunity.

The question is: has Arewa truly rejected Atiku?

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