Tinubu to flag off re-election campaign in Kaduna Oct 24 — Yari

From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja

President Bola Tinubu’s re-election campaign is scheduled to kick off in Kaduna on October 24, Director-General of the Presidential Campaign Council, Abdulaziz Yari, has said.

Yari disclosed this on Friday, after meeting with Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where he briefed the president on preparations for the campaign and the proposed timetable for state visits.

He said the campaign council would hold its inaugural meeting on October 14, at the State House Banquet Hall, ahead of the Kaduna flag-off.

“The inaugural meeting 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,” Yari said.

He added that the president had approved the proposed timetable for visits to states across the country, with Port Harcourt and Maiduguri listed as the next destinations after Kaduna.

“We have 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,” he said.

Yari said the full timetable would be made public after the campaign council’s inauguration.

On the opposition, particularly former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra State governor, Peter Obi, Yari argued that Tinubu’s political support across the country would be difficult to dislodge.

He said the political calculations ahead of the 2027 election required candidates to build support in both northern and southern Nigeria, rather than rely on dominance in one region.

“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 cannot make it,” he said.

Yari cited the electoral performance of former President Muhammadu Buhari as an example, arguing that his strong support in the North had not initially translated into victory at the national level.