President Bola Tinubu will begin his 2027 re-election campaign in Kaduna on October 24, the Director-General of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, says.
Yari made this known to State House correspondents on Friday evening after briefing Tinubu at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja, on the council’s campaign preparations.
According to him, the President asked to see him to be updated on where the council stood and to discuss the timetable of state visits during the campaign.
Yari said, “By God’s grace, his team, I, and Mr President himself, we have agreed on how it’s going to be done.
“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.
“Then we outlined our state visits to each and every place where we will go, and the President has approved them. So we are going to hit the ground running by the 24th of October, inshallah.”
Asked which states the campaign would visit after Kaduna, Yari said the next stop would be Port Harcourt, Rivers State, followed by Maiduguri, Borno State.
He said the full timetable would be released after the council’s inauguration.
“We have the timetable, and we are going to make it available after the inauguration. But this has all been understood and approved by the team of Mr President and I,” he said.
Asked about the challenge posed by the presidential candidates of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Peter Obi and the Nigeria Democratic Congress, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Yari argued that Tinubu could not be unseated because God had used the President to support both men in the past.
“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.
“So if Allah uses me to support you, there is no way Allah will use you to bring me down,” he said.
The former Zamfara State governor also argued that no candidate could win the presidency without a base in both the North and the South.
He added, “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?
“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.
“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 cited the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, saying he “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,” and “couldn’t make it all the way.”
By contrast, Yari argued that 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 affirmed.
He added that Tinubu “has turned around the situation that he met on ground, and the economy is moving.
“So I think we have done enough that we can tell our opponents about what we did. We are not promising. We are doing it, and we are going to continue.”
Tinubu named Yari Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council on August 22, 2026, with Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma as secretary.
The President chairs the council, while Vice President Kashim Shettima and APC National Chairman Nentawe Yilwatda are vice chairmen.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has fixed January 16, 2027 for the presidential and National Assembly elections. Its timetable allows campaigns from August 19, 2026, ending on January 15, 2027.
INEC said 18 candidates are in the race for the presidency. Among them is Atiku, the candidate of the African Democratic Congress, with former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as his running mate.
Obi, former Anambra State Governor, is contesting on the platform of the Nigeria Democratic Congress.
