Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdul’Aziz Abubakar Yari, has called on northerners to allow.President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to complete his eight years in office, by voting for him in the 2027 presidential election.
Yari said a vote for Tinubu in January’s presidential election is a way of respecting the established principle of rotational presidency in Nigeria.
Speaking to journalists at the Kano Government House after holding a closed-door meeting with Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf on Saturday,
Yari stated that the only realistic alternative on the card was for the North to be gentlemanly in the arrangement and allow Tinubu to complete his eight-year tenure.
The former Zamfara State governor stated that the North should respect the political arrangement that brought the presidency to the South in 2023, positing that the presidency had been held by a northerner for several years before Tinubu’s emergence.
According to Yari, “66 years ago since independence, the country was led by northerners for 47 years,” adding that Nigerians should recognise the importance of sustaining unity and understanding how the nation y’s political system runs.
“As we love this country, we don’t have any country other than Nigeria. Nigerians should understand how this country works. It is also better than many nations,” Yari said.
Continuing, he said, “Having said this, this country, Nigeria, from 2015 to 2023 was led by a northerner, and now from 2023 to 2026 it is led by a southerner.
“If we say we want to uproot the zoning arrangement because of our numbers, then my call for northerners is to understand how it works. They even understand more than I do,” Yari said.
While acknowledging that the administration of President Tinubu, like every other government, was not perfect, Yari argued that the challenges facing Nigeria should not be blamed on the administration.
“Nobody is perfect. The southerners have also experienced what we are complaining about today when President Buhari was in power”
On the issue of insecurity, Yari maintained that it was not peculiar to Nigeria, stressing that nations of the world, comprising the United States, of America are still contending with insecurity, irrespective of their advanced level of development despite their level of development.
“No problem of a country is solved by any government, including even in the United States. They are managing insecurity as we are managing it,” he said.
On the state of the economy, Yari said Nigerians should assess the administration of Tinubu based on economic indicators and compare the situation when the President assumed office in 2023 with the present position.
“When you look at when Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power in 2023, go and check what was the state of our reserves and what it is today, and what was the rate of inflation in 2023 and what it is today,” he said.
He called on Nigerians, especially those in the north, to allow the political arrangement, stating that the presidency would return to the region after Tinubu’s tenure if the existing rotation principle was kept.
“I am calling on northerners to note that by the time Bola Ahmed Tinubu finishes in 2031, it will definitely come back to the North. This is how the arrangement is,” said Yari.
