2027:Yari Urges North To Respect Power Rotation, Back Tinubu’s 8-Year Presidency
By Abdullahi Yusuf
The Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdul’Aziz Yari Abubakar, has urged the North to respect the informal power-rotation arrangement and allow President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to complete his constitutionally permitted eight-year tenure.
Yari made the call while addressing journalists at the Government House,Kano, after a meeting with Kano Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf.
The former Zamfara State Governor said the North should understand and respect the political arrangement that brought the presidency to the South in 2023, arguing that the presidency had been held by a northerner for several years before the emergence of Tinubu as President.
“Since our independence 66 years ago, the country was led by northerners for 47 years,” adding that Nigerians should recognise the importance of maintaining unity and understanding how the country’s political system operates.
According to him, Nigeria remains a country that all citizens must work together to protect, regardless of regional or political differences.
“As we love this country, we don’t have any country other than Nigeria. Nigerians should come and understand how this country works. It is also better than many nations,” the APC chieftain said.
He explained that his role as Director-General of the campaign council was not limited to promoting President Tinubu but also included promoting national unity and understanding among Nigerians.
He said the current political arrangement should be respected, noting that former President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, governed the country between 2015 and 2023 before power shifted to Tinubu from the South in 2023.
“Having said this, this country, Nigeria, from 2015 to 2023 was led by a northerner, and now from 2023 to 2026 it is being led by a Southerner,” he said.
The lawmaker,therefore, appealed to northerners not to seek to overturn the existing zoning arrangement on the basis of the region’s population, explaining that the political understanding was important for national stability.
“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.
He acknowledged that President Tinubu’s administration, like every government, is not perfect, but argued that the challenges facing Nigeria should not solely be attributed to the administration.
“Nobody is perfect. The southerners have also experienced what we are complaining about today when President Buhari was in power,” he said.
Yari also argued that insecurity is not peculiar to Nigeria, saying countries across the world, including the United States, continue to grapple with security challenges despite their level of development.
“On problems, 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.
The director-general further cited gun violence in Chicago as an example of the security challenges faced by other countries, stressing that every nation has its own problems that require continuous efforts to address.
Turning to the economy, Yari said Nigerians should assess the Tinubu administration based on economic indicators and compare the situation at the time the president assumed office in 2023 with the current 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.
Yari maintained that the administration is making efforts to address the country’s economic and security challenges, while acknowledging that governments at both federal and state levels are working to improve the situation.
He, therefore,urged Nigerians, particularly those in the North, to give the political arrangement time, arguing that the presidency would return to the region after Tinubu’s tenure if the existing rotation principle is maintained.
“I am calling on northerners to note that by the time Bola Ahmed Tinubu finishes in 2031, power will definitely come back to the North. So, this is how the arrangement is,” Yari said.
He added that federal and state governments are making efforts to address the challenges confronting the country and urged Nigerians to support measures aimed at strengthening national unity and development.