Professor Usman Yusuf has reacted to the APC’s newly constituted presidential campaign council, headed by Senator Abdulaziz Yari as Director General, saying he wishes the council bad luck as it prepares to sell the Tinubu administration to Nigerians ahead of the 2027 election.
In an interview on Symfoni tv, Prof. Yusuf said the campaign council contains an assortment of the good, the bad, the ugly, while questioning the credibility of some of the people selected to campaign for the government.
According to him, Nigerians are waiting for the people who will be sent around the country to defend the Tinubu administration and convince citizens to vote for it again.
President Tinubu is not going to do any campaign.
The usual campaign. He’s not, Yusuf said, arguing that Nigerians would not see Tinubu moving around the country in the same manner as former President Muhammadu Buhari did.
Yusuf further claimed that Tinubu does not have the strength to embark on such a nationwide campaign and said the President can’t face the people.
He argued that the government has therefore contracted politicians, clerics and others to go around the country and sell this mess again to us.
On Senator Abdulaziz Yari’s appointment as Director General of the campaign council, Yusuf acknowledged that choosing a former governor of Zamfara was a strategic move, but questioned what Yari would tell people in the North.
I can imagine President Tinubu saying to Yari, go and talk to your people, go and get the vote, he said.
Yusuf, however, argued that Yari is now on the wrong side of the people, insisting that he does not believe the former Zamfara governor can successfully convince people in the North to support Tinubu.
The professor also pointed to the North’s support for Tinubu in the 2023 election, saying 62 percent of the President’s votes came from the North, particularly the Muslim North.
He said voters would now ask what they have gained from the government and compare the situation in northern states with places such as Lagos.
Lagos State, his own state, did not vote for him. Katsina, my state voted for him. So people will compare: what did Lagos get? What did Katsina get? Why should we vote for you again?
Yusuf said the calculation was simple because politics is local and politics is on the pocketbook, stressing that Nigerians are dealing with hardship, poverty and worsening insecurity.
He also questioned what Yari would tell the people of Zamfara, given that he is a former governor of the state.
What are you going to tell the people of Zamfara? Is security in Zamfara better now than before you guys came?
Yusuf said Zamfara is near and dear to him because he attended Government Secondary School, Gusau, and recalled the state he knew decades ago.
He said he shed tears whenever he visited Zamfara, describing the transformation of the state as painful compared with the peaceful environment he knew while growing up there.
On his recent silence, Yusuf described it as strategic silence, saying he has been watching events unfold and waiting to see how the government and its campaign council would respond to the challenges facing Nigerians.
Just see how everything unfolds, how they’re going to do what they are going to do, because they’re all flailing. They’re clueless.
He said he is waiting for the government’s message rather than the propaganda coming from Abuja, criticizing politicians and tax collectors who present figures about GDP, savings and government achievements without connecting them to the everyday lives of Nigerians.
Abuja politicians and tax collectors talking numbers that has no connection at all to the lives of our people. None.
Yusuf also questioned the size of the campaign council, which he said is well over 100 members, asking whether having numerous governors, lawmakers and other political figures would make any difference.
He then pointed to the recent political development in Osun State as a clear indicator of what could happen when Nigerians are given the opportunity to express themselves at the polls.
Yusuf suggested that the APC should take the Osun experience as a lesson, arguing that the party should not assume that having a large campaign council, governors, lawmakers and other political figures will automatically translate into votes.
Shouldn’t Osun teach them a lesson? he asked, pointing to the outcome in the state as an indication that political structures and positions alone may not be enough to win the confidence of voters.
He said the APC may try to present the Osun development as evidence of President Tinubu’s democratic credentials, with the government claiming that the President allowed everything to go peacefully.
According to Yusuf, however, the government is skilled at controlling the narrative and spinning political developments in its favour.
They are masters of spinning. But there’s so much you can spin. You over-spin.
Yusuf said Osun should therefore serve as a pointer and an indicator for the APC as it prepares for the 2027 election.
So Osun is a pointer, is an indicator. We are waiting. Come to Osun. We’re waiting. So let them tell their story. People are patiently waiting for them.
He ended by insisting that Nigerians are watching and waiting for the APC campaign council to come before the people and explain why they should support Tinubu again.
We are waiting for the story.
People are patiently waiting for them.
