By Babayola M. Toungo
Politics, as the old saying goes, is the art of the possible. In Nigeria, however, it has often degenerated into the art of the provocative, the personal and the predictable. Every campaign season produces its familiar theatre: allegations are thrown, insinuations are made, old grievances are resurrected, identities are weaponised and political opponents compete to see who can generate the loudest controversy. The candidate who takes every bait soon discovers that he is no longer conducting his own campaign. He is merely responding to somebody else’s. This is where strategic ambiguity becomes an important instrument of political communication.
For Ahmed Tijjani Galadima, the emerging political proposition appears to offer an opportunity to deploy ambiguity not as an escape from difficult questions, but as a means of refusing to be trapped by the questions his opponents choose to ask. In an environment where political competitors may attempt to define a candidate before the candidate has had the opportunity to define himself, the ability to choose what to answer, what to ignore and what to reframe can become as important as the answer itself. The central principle is deceptively simple: do not allow your opponent to determine the battlefield on which you must fight.
This is particularly relevant to TAG because his campaign has already sought to establish a different political vocabulary through the proposition, “Build On, Not Bulldoze.” It is more than a slogan. Properly developed, it is a political philosophy. It says that government should not be reduced to the destructive ritual of repudiating everything that came before merely because a new administration has arrived. Development is a continuum. Institutions take time to mature. Infrastructure should not be demolished in the name of political novelty. What works should be preserved; what does not work should be reformed; what has been started should be completed; and what has been achieved should become the foundation for something better.
That philosophy has a communications implication that should not be underestimated.
If the political message is about building, then the campaign must resist being dragged into the politics of demolition. Nigeria’s political culture has made personal combat almost indistinguishable from political debate. A candidate is attacked, he responds. The response provokes another attack, followed by another rebuttal. Before long, the campaign becomes an endless exchange of accusations in which nobody is discussing the economy, jobs, agriculture, education, security, investment or the future of the state. The political class talks incessantly about itself while the citizenry waits for somebody to talk about them.
Strategic ambiguity offers a way out of that trap. It does not mean that TAG should refuse to answer legitimate questions. It does not mean avoiding accountability. It certainly should not become an excuse for saying different things to different audiences. Rather, it means understanding that not every political provocation deserves an immediate or literal response. Some attacks are designed less to obtain an answer than to manufacture one. Their real objective is to force a candidate into an emotional reaction, pull him away from his preferred narrative and make him spend valuable political capital defending himself on terrain chosen by someone else.
The most effective response is sometimes to decline the invitation. There is political strength in saying, in effect: we have heard you, but that is not where we intend to take the people. This is where ambiguity becomes strategic. An opponent may demand that TAG enter a particular argument; TAG can acknowledge the concern without accepting the opponent’s framing. An allegation may invite a furious rebuttal; the campaign can respond with evidence where necessary, while refusing to turn the allegation into the centrepiece of its communication. A provocative statement may be designed to produce outrage; the campaign can lower the temperature and return to its programme. The objective is not silence. The objective is agenda control. There is a profound difference.
Silence can sometimes suggest weakness. Strategic restraint, properly communicated, can suggest confidence. The candidate who responds to every rumour may appear permanently defensive. The candidate who understands which issues deserve engagement and which deserve no oxygen begins to project something different: composure.
But there is another reason this matters. In politics, attention is a scarce resource. Every newspaper headline, radio discussion, television appearance, social-media post and campaign statement occupies a portion of the public mind. A political campaign therefore has to decide not only what it wants people to know, but what it does not want its opponents to make them discuss. That is why TAG’s strongest response to political attacks may not always be another political attack. It may be a policy.
If an opponent says TAG has no economic vision, the answer should ultimately be the economic vision. If the criticism is that agriculture is being romanticised, the response should be the details of irrigation, agricultural inputs, storage, processing, market access and agro-industrialisation. If the question is jobs, the answer should be how jobs will be created, financed and measured. If the challenge is infrastructure, the campaign should explain how infrastructure will be converted into productivity. In other words, make the programme the rebuttal.
This is where “Build On, Not Bulldoze” becomes particularly powerful. It allows TAG to avoid the false choice between defending everything that exists and condemning everything that exists. He can occupy the more difficult middle ground: acknowledge progress where progress has occurred, identify shortcomings where they exist and promise to take the next step. That is a mature political position because it neither worships the past nor pretends that history began with the arrival of a new candidate. For Adamawa, this distinction could matter enormously.
The state does not need another election in which candidates spend months proving that their predecessors were incompetent, corrupt, misguided or incapable of doing anything right. What it needs is a serious conversation about what has been built, what remains unfinished, what has failed, what new challenges have emerged and what must be done next. That is the political space TAG can seek to occupy.
There is also a tactical advantage in strategic ambiguity when dealing with opponents whose objective is to provoke polarisation. In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and politically diverse state, candidates must understand that every word travels beyond the immediate audience to which it was addressed. A careless response can acquire a life of its own. A personal quarrel can become a communal argument. A political disagreement can be recast as an ethnic confrontation. A campaign that begins with policy can quickly become consumed by identity. The responsible candidate must therefore know when to fight and when not to fight. This is not cowardice. It is political discipline.
Indeed, one of the clearest signs of political maturity is the ability to distinguish between an opponent who deserves an answer and an opponent who merely deserves to be ignored. Not every critic is an existential threat. Not every accusation requires a press conference. Not every social-media provocation requires a trending hashtag. Sometimes the most damaging thing a campaign can do to a hostile narrative is to give it oxygen.
Yet strategic ambiguity must have boundaries. Used badly, it can become political slipperiness. If citizens ask a straightforward question and receive an intentionally obscure answer, ambiguity ceases to be strategy and becomes evasion. If a campaign deliberately leaves contradictory interpretations hanging in the air because it wants different audiences to believe different things, that is not sophistication. It is manipulation. TAG’s challenge, therefore, is to practise principled ambiguity: flexible in political tactics, but unmistakable in values and policy. The broad message should remain constant even when the response to individual attacks changes. Prosperity. Inclusion. Security. Shared opportunity.
Agriculture as an engine of growth. Infrastructure as a platform for productivity. Human capital as the state’s greatest asset. Youth as producers, innovators and entrepreneurs rather than permanent beneficiaries of political patronage. Women as full participants in the economy. Investment as a function of confidence, infrastructure and institutions. Security as an economic necessity. Government as an institution of delivery rather than an arena for endless political theatre. These are the things that should become associated with the TAG name.
That is the real purpose of political positioning. A candidate wins the communication battle not necessarily by answering the greatest number of questions, but by ensuring that the public associates his candidacy with the questions that matter most. This is why “Build On, Not Bulldoze” deserves to be developed far beyond a campaign slogan. It can become the organising principle for TAG’s response to almost every political challenge.
When accused of wanting to destroy an existing initiative, the answer is: we will build on what works. When accused of merely continuing the past, the answer is: building on something does not mean refusing to improve it. When confronted with the politics of personality, the answer is: let us discuss the policy. When dragged toward ethnic or religious confrontation, the answer is: the government belongs to every citizen. When challenged to denounce everything that came before, the answer is: development is not a demolition exercise.
And when opponents insist that politics must be about who belongs where, the campaign can ask the more consequential question: what are we going to build together?
That is where strategic ambiguity becomes more than a communications trick. It becomes a mechanism for changing the subject of the election without appearing to avoid the election itself.
The danger for TAG, however, is that a strategy of restraint must be supported by substance. One cannot permanently answer criticism with silence. Eventually, voters will demand specifics. The more ambitious the promise, the greater the burden of explanation. Three agro-industrial hubs must have locations, financing models and implementation pathways. Job creation must have numbers, sectors and mechanisms. Revenue reform must explain how government will expand the economic base without placing additional burdens on citizens. Security proposals must be credible. Education and healthcare commitments must be costed. Infrastructure must be connected to economic outcomes.
The campaign therefore faces an important transition: from message to evidence. The declaration introduces the candidate. The manifesto explains the philosophy. Policy papers provide the architecture. Costed programmes establish credibility. Public engagement subjects the ideas to scrutiny. And disciplined communication keeps the candidate’s central proposition visible throughout the contest. This is where the politics of ideas must become the politics of proof.
TAG should not be afraid of scrutiny. Indeed, the campaign can turn scrutiny into an advantage by inviting citizens, journalists, professionals, academics, farmers, businesspeople and civil society organisations to interrogate the proposals. The message should be simple: Here is what we intend to do. Here is why we believe it can work. Here is what it will cost. Tell us where we are wrong. That is a much more difficult politics than trading insults. It is also a more consequential one.
The ultimate test of strategic ambiguity is therefore not whether TAG can evade his opponents. It is whether he can prevent his opponents from becoming the protagonists of his campaign. They should not be. The protagonist should be Adamawa.
The story should be about a state moving from foundations to productivity, from productivity to prosperity and from prosperity to dignity. It should be about a generation of young people who want opportunity rather than political slogans; farmers who want markets rather than sympathy; businesses that want infrastructure and predictable institutions; women who want access to finance and productive opportunity; communities that want security; and citizens who want a government that can explain what it is doing and demonstrate whether it is working.
This is why the most sophisticated political response may sometimes be no response at all. But where a response is necessary, it should be measured. Where clarification is required, it should be factual. Where criticism is legitimate, it should be acknowledged. Where provocation is obvious, it should be denied the privilege of determining the campaign’s agenda.
In a political environment addicted to noise, composure can itself become a message.
And in an election increasingly crowded with personalities, the candidate who can persuade voters that he is thinking beyond the next headline may acquire an advantage that no amount of political shouting can easily erase.
“Build On, Not Bulldoze” is therefore not merely a promise about infrastructure or government policy. It can become the intellectual foundation of a political temperament: do not destroy merely to prove that you have arrived; do not attack merely because you have been attacked; do not inherit yesterday’s quarrels when tomorrow’s problems demand your attention.
Adamawa does not need another political demolition derby. It needs a serious argument about what comes next. And perhaps that is the most effective answer TAG can give his opponents: not a louder insult, not a more vicious counterattack, but a bigger question.
After all the politics, all the arguments and all the noise – what exactly are we going to build?
That is where “Build On, Not Bulldoze” can cease to be a slogan and become a political choice.