President Bola Tinubu will formally commence his 2027 re-election campaign in Kaduna on October 24, according to Senator Abdulaziz Yari, Director-General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council.
Yari, a former Zamfara State governor, disclosed this on Friday after briefing Tinubu at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja, on preparations for the campaign and the proposed timetable for the President’s state visits.
He said the campaign council’s inaugural meeting would hold on October 14 at the State House Banquet Hall, ahead of the Kaduna flag-off.
“By God’s grace, his team, I, and Mr President himself, we have agreed on how it’s going to be done,” Yari said.
“We have put forward a proposal. The inaugural meeting [of the campaign council] is going to be done on the 14th of this month. That’s next Wednesday at the State House banquet hall, and by God’s grace, on the 24th of October, we’re going to do our flag-off campaign in Kaduna, inshallah.”
Yari said the campaign would move to Port Harcourt, Rivers State, and Maiduguri, Borno State, after the Kaduna launch. He added that the full itinerary, already approved by Tinubu, would be made public after the council’s inauguration.
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On the challenge posed by opposition presidential hopefuls Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Yari expressed confidence that Tinubu would retain power, citing what he described as the President’s broad political reach across the country.
“We are talking of the President of the country, and this President, who, by God’s grace, Almighty God used him to support Atiku some time back, and at the same time to support Peter Obi,” he said.
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“So if Allah uses me to support you, there is no way Allah will use you to bring me down.”
Yari questioned the opposition candidates’ ability to secure substantial support across both regions of the country, arguing that neither could win the presidency by relying heavily on one part of Nigeria.
“Can the ADC candidate today in the southern part of the country beat his chest and say he has control of one state in the South? And I don’t think Peter Obi, who used to be my colleague, can beat his chest. Can he say he has control of one state in northern Nigeria?” he asked.
He argued that electoral success required a strong presence in both the North and South, citing the late former President Muhammadu Buhari’s past electoral difficulties as an example.
“So this calculation shows us that even if you have control of 80 per cent of the South, if you don’t have anything in the North, you cannot make it,” Yari said. “If you have 80 per cent of control of the North, if you don’t have any state in the South, you can’t make it, and that’s what it is.”
Yari said Buhari “had control of over 70 per cent at that time, over 11 states in the North and had no control of one in the South,” but “couldn’t make it all the way.”
By contrast, he claimed Tinubu controls “more than 10 states in the South, in the conservative estimate” and more than 10 states in the North.
“This is calculation, it is not rocket science,” he said, adding that Tinubu had turned around the situation he inherited and that the economy was moving.
