Yari tells the North to back Tinubu in 2027 as repayment for supporting Buhari
Director-General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council Abdul’aziz Yari has asked the North to give more support to President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 re-election bid.
He made the case on Monday at the palace of the Oba of Lagos, Oba Riliwanu Akiolu. Yari, a former Zamfara governor, said Tinubu stood by the late Muhammadu Buhari for two full terms from 2015 to 2023 and resisted a “power-mongering bloc” that wanted him to run in 2019. That loyalty, Yari argued, is reason enough for northern votes now.
“For us in the north, I think it is time for us to pay Tinubu back for allowing the north to complete its full term.” He said Tinubu had pledged to stay with Buhari as long as Buhari asked for votes, “and that was what Tinubu truly did.” There was, in his view, no excuse for the region not to let Tinubu “complete his tenure.” He added that the campaign was not asking for backing only as power rotation, but because it believed Nigerians wanted the president to continue. Oba Akiolu said there was “no vacancy in Aso Rock” for the next four or five years.
Tinubu named Yari campaign DG on 22 August 2026, with Imo Governor Hope Uzodinma as secretary.
The pitch is a debt story: one region finished two terms, so another region should finish this one. Campaigns use that arithmetic often. Voters still decide whether a 2019 decision inside the APC binds a 2027 ballot. Yari is asking northern “people of high calibre” to treat fairness as continuity. Opposition camps will treat the same years as a record to be judged, not a favour to be repaid. The palace visit puts both messages—the debt and the Oba’s “no vacancy”—on the same day. The election will test which one travels outside Lagos.
