The Director-General of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdul’Aziz Abubakar Yari, has urged northerners to allow President Bola Tinubu to complete his constitutionally permitted eight-year tenure, arguing that doing so would uphold Nigeria’s established political understanding on rotation of the presidency.
Yari made the call on Saturday while speaking with journalists at the Kano Government House after a closed-door meeting with the state governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf.
The former Zamfara State governor said the North should respect the political arrangement that preceded Tinubu’s emergence as President in 2023, noting that the country had been governed by a northerner for several years before power shifted to the South.
According to Yari, the current political arrangement should not be disrupted because of the North’s population advantage.
“The only viable option now is for the North to be gentlemanly in the arrangement and allow Tinubu to complete his eight-year tenure,” he said.
Yari said Nigeria had been led by northerners for a significant portion of its 66 years of independence and urged citizens to prioritise national unity over regional considerations.
“66 years ago since independence, the country was led by northerners for 47 years. Nigerians should understand the importance of maintaining unity and understanding how the country’s political system operates,” he said.
He said his appeal was not only connected to his responsibility as the APC campaign council’s Director-General but also to what he described as the need to promote national unity and understanding among Nigerians.
“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.
Yari recalled that former President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, governed Nigeria from 2015 to 2023 before Tinubu, a southerner, assumed office 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 led by a southerner,” he said.
The APC chieftain urged northerners not to seek to overturn the zoning arrangement on the basis of the region’s population, stressing that political agreements should be respected.
“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,” he said.
Yari acknowledged that the Tinubu administration, like previous governments, had faced challenges and was not perfect. He, however, argued that some of the problems confronting Nigerians predated the current administration.
“Nobody is perfect. The southerners have also experienced what we are complaining about today when President Buhari was in power,” he said.
On insecurity, Yari said the challenge was not peculiar to Nigeria, arguing that countries across the world also contend with security 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.
He cited gun violence in Chicago as an example of the security challenges confronting other countries, stressing that governments must continue working to address their respective challenges.
On the economy, Yari urged Nigerians to assess the Tinubu administration by comparing key economic indicators from 2023 with their current positions.
“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 Federal Government and state governments were making efforts to address the country’s economic and security challenges.
He further argued that, if the existing rotation principle was maintained, the presidency would return to the North after Tinubu’s tenure.
“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,” Yari said.
