• Claims region won’t pander to those who lost out in power game
• Dare: President will win next election comfortably
• ‘Reports of access denial to Shettima fabricated, mischievous’
• Labour Party disowns ex-Obi’s running mate
Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule yesterday declared that the North would not waver in its support for the re-election of President Bola Tinubu in 2027.
The North, the governor insisted, would not pander to the whims and caprices of a few who want to equate their personal interest with that of the majority of the people of the region.
Governor Sule spoke on a day the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, said Tinubu would be re-elected comfortably regardless of “the volume of armchair theories and political conspiracies” by opponents.
The President’s performance ‘will clear the path,” Dare said.
Speaking at the 2025 Nzeh Mada Festival in Akwanga, Akwanga Local Government Area of the state yesterday, Gov. Sule said it had become imperative for the North to work towards the actualisation of Tinubu’s return in 2027.
According to him, supporting the President’s re-election would be a fulfillment of the promise the region’s leaders made ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Sule, who doubles as Chairman, North Central Governors Forum, said the North is not known for reneging on its promise.
He urged North’s stakeholders to disregard the agitation of a few politicians who are bent on causing confusion in the polity on account of their failed personal ambition.
He said the same politicians were among the region’s leaders who sold Tinubu’s candidacy to the people in 2023.
He said: “Some politicians will always create confusion if they fail to get what they want or achieve their targets.
“As a junior governor then, some of the older governors told us that the best person for the presidency was Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“They told us Tinubu can transform Nigeria the same way he made Lagos an epicenter of business and commerce.
“It was a challenging period but we worked hard to bring Tinubu into office.
“Today, the same people, because they couldn’t get what they were looking for, are criticising Tinubu; that he is the worst President Nigeria has ever produced.
“Well, whether he is the good, the bad or the ugly, by the grace of God, we are bringing back Bola Ahmed Tinubu to continue as president of Nigeria.”
He said the North made a firm commitment that having been in the presidency for eight years, the South should have its turn.
“So, we cannot do the contrary. We cannot say something today and say another tomorrow.
“So, we have to be patient and support the President to do his eight years in office,” he noted.
Only last Wednesday, prominent members of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) bloc in the All Progressives Congress (APC) pledged their support for the Tinubu administration and its policies.
They also pledged loyalty to the APC.
Former Nasarawa State Governor, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, the only elected CPC governor; former Katsina State Governor Aminu Bello Masari, who was House of Representatives Speaker, and Minister of Education in the Muhammadu Buhari Administration, Alhaji Adamu Adamu, signed a communiqué after a meeting of the CPC bloc, along with 20 others.
It was in reaction to the switch by former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, a member of the CPC bloc, to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) last month.
Similarly, the North Central Renaissance Movement (NCRM) has expressed support for Tinubu ahead of the 2027 polls.
Chairperson of the movement, Prof. Nghargbu K’tso, during a visit to Governor Sule in Lafia on Friday, also advocated that the North Central Zone should produce the President after 2027.
He said the zone has suffered marginalization since the country’s independence.
According to him, only the North Central geopolitical zone is yet to produce a democratic president since Nigeria got her independence about 65 years ago.
Tinubu will win comfortably in 2027, says Dare
Dare said on his X account @SundayDareSD yesterday that Tinubu has performed well so far to deserve re-election.
He was reacting to the Friday interview by the Labour Party’s 2023 vice-presidential candidate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed on Arise Television.
Baba-Ahmed had claimed that he did not see the President getting re-elected because, according to him, Nigerians would demand a shift towards true democracy by 2027.
Dare dismissed Baba Ahmed’s remarks as illogical and lacking substance.
His words: “Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed’s ‘illogical logic’ was all over the place in his recent interview with a television channel. He peddled arguments that were flawed, devoid of reason and empty.
“He must have as well dropped from space, going by what he spewed out during the interview.
“Listening to Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed spurn his postulations about the political future of Nigeria and that of the incumbent President is like listening to the new year predictions of charlatan ‘prophets’ which never come true.
“Yusuf Baba Ahmed and his co-traveller Peter Obi are indeed a ‘double whammy’ in the Nigerian political space.
“If listening to a Peter Obi interview was a punishment, listening to Baba-Ahmed, his defunct running mate, is a torment.
“His political logic is not fit for even a first-year Political Science class, and even then, they will query his postulations.
“He chose to base his political calculations on President Bola Tinubu not winning a second term given his antecedents and because Nigerians will decide at the polls among other things.
“He conveniently avoided the substance of performance and capacity.
“Unfortunately, he chose to walk into a lane he was unfamiliar with and chose to confront a politician he is no match for.
“If theories could fly, Yusuf Baba Ahmed and all the other Presidential Wannabes (PW) could have become President since.
“But Politics is not for theorists or the faint hearted nor the parochial.
“Politics is for those with a solid track record of performance, the courageous, far-sighted and gifted. Qualities he clearly lacks.
“Another thing Baba Ahmed lacks is the capacity for honesty, because that is the only way to describe his claim that President Tinubu is not fulfilling his campaign promises.
“The positive impacts of the tough choices the President Tinubu has made in the interest of the country are already being felt, and the economic indices are there to prove this.
“Even the IMF recently acknowledged – ‘Tinubu’s Reforms have put the economy in a better position to navigate this external environment’ – Schimmelpfennig.
“In 2027, Baba Ahmed and the other PWs will need all the marines available to defeat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who in about two years has demonstrated his capacity to govern and to re-engineer Nigeria in a way hitherto unknown.
“Tinubu will win comfortably in 2027, no matter the volume of armchair theories and political conspiracies. His performance will clear the path.
“So, instead of running the circuit of television networks to peddle his poorly thought-out conjectures, Baba Ahmed should seriously consider how to rehabilitate his failed political career; an intervention he urgently needs.
“And if Datti Baba-Ahmed is smart, he will simply keep quiet and leave politics for those equipped for that complicated art.”
Labour Party dissociates self from Baba-Ahmed’s statement
A faction of the Labour Party condemned Baba-Ahmed’s description of the Tinubu’s government as ‘questionably constitutional’.
National Publicity Secretary of the faction, Dr. Arabambi Abayomi, said in Kaduna that the party viewed the comment as undemocratic and capable of inciting Nigerians against the government.
Abayomi said that the LP approached the 2023 general election with all determination to make a difference in the way Nigeria is run, and sponsored candidates it believed at the time had the capacity to win elections for the party.
He said the result of that Presidential election declared didn’t go its way and the party challenged the result up to the Supreme Court and lost.
“For the interest and peace of the nation, the Labour Party accepted the judgment of the Supreme Court, not because we were pleased but because of the FINALITY of the Supreme Court’s judgment.
“The party has since moved on,” he said.
Abayomi spoke of LP’s shock at Baba Ahmed’s reference to the 2023 presidential election at a meeting in Abuja as ‘questionably constitutional’ even with the legitimacy conferred on the Tinubu government by the Supreme Court.
He said:”For us in the Labour Party, this statement is clearly inciting and a call for mass action against a constituted authority.
“We think there should be a limit to whipping up public sentiments against a legitimate government.
“The Arab Spring that rattled the entire Middle East started when the Arab leaders paid no attention to Bouazizi’s subtle but persistent galvanisation of the youths against their governments, leading into the mass demonstrations, revolts and revolutions that almost consumed the region.
“Recall that Baba-Ahmed while refusing to concede victory in the 2023 presidential election also alleged that the Tinubu government harboured a grand scheme to dismember Nigeria into six possibly autonomous zones and that the administration has thrown Nigerians into untold hardship, all in efforts to weep up sentiments against the government.
“Nigeria is presently passing through a dangerous and precarious phase, and it is expected that every well-meaning Nigerian should realise the fragility of the nation, put politics aside and help to move the nation out of the woods.
“The leadership of Labour Party wishes to state clearly that it is within the right of every Nigerian to hold the government accountable for its inability to live up to the expectation.
“However, statements that are inciting and capable of plunging the nation into unwarranted combustion, particularly by the political class, must be avoided.
“The Labour Party under the able leadership of Barr. Julius Abure therefore wishes to completely dissociate itself from the unfortunate and reprehensible comments by its former vice presidential candidate.
“Similarly, the party also viewed the comment by the Abia State governor, Dr. Alex Otti of a possible ‘dooms day’ awaiting the Barr. Julius Abure’s led leadership as a direct threat to the lives of the party executive members.
“As if Labour Party is his personal company, Governor Otti at the illegal meeting on Wednesday 9th April, 2025 boasted that Abure refused an offer of the Chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the party and that he was ready to ‘fumigate Abure and his team out of office’.
“He also threatened that the ‘dooms day’ is imminent. The party is therefore warning that no harm should befall any of the party’s leaders as a result of the imminent doom that the governor has threatened.
“This threat is coming a few days after a similar threat by the NLC President, Comrade Joe Ajero to mobilise arms men to ‘flush’ the leadership out of our offices across the nation.
“We believe that these threats are not coincidental in any way as it is a known fact that NLC’s rascality is equally being funded by the Abia State Government.
“We are therefore by this statement notifying Nigerians, particularly the National Security Adviser (NSA), to come to our aid as our lives are clearly in danger and we no longer feel safe.”
VP was never denied access to presidential villa – Spokesperson
The spokesperson of Vice-President Kashim Shettima, Mr Stanley Nkwocha, yesterday debunked reports that armed military units denied the Vice-President access to the Presidential Villa.
In a statement in Abuja, Nkwocha said the publication was a story so far removed from reality.
According to him, such misinformation can only be entertained by those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Nigerian government.
Nkwocha, therefore, urged the public to disregard such malicious publications and advised the media to continue to seek information from credible sources and approach sensational claims with the caution it deserves.
“This we owe ourselves collectively as a nation,” he said.
Nkwocha noted that in recent times, there has been deliberate and well-planned orchestration of falsehood against the Vice President’s person and office in many multidimensional forms.
“These mischievous and totally fabricated reports are all in a bid to cause confusion and insinuate total clash in the Presidency.
” These reports seek to mislead the public into believing there’s discord at the highest levels of government.
“The latest in this string of disinformation is a report claiming that the Vice-President has been refused entry to the Villa.
“This is a feeble attempt to traduce the person and office of His Excellency, Vice President Kashim Shettima. For the record, NOTHING OF THE SORT EVER HAPPENED.
“The recent publication by some obscure blogs alleging that armed military units have barricaded the Vice President from accessing the Presidential Villa is not only the wildest expression of wishful thinking.
“(It’s) a clear indication that the purveyors of these tales have exhausted both ink and imagination.”
Nkwocha said earlier this week, the Presidency dismissed similar fake news regarding responsibility for the circulation of campaign posters bearing the images of President Bola Tinubu.
“These stories reflect a desperate attempt to undermine the President and his Deputy’s fidelity to the rule of law and our constitution.
“Let it be known that those pushing these falsehoods do so in vain.
”It is understandable, though regrettable, that the mischief-makers continue to underestimate the strength of the bond and goodwill between the President and the Vice President.
“However, their questionable sources or habitual reliance on misinformation have once again led them astray.
“These fairy tales they publish serve no purpose beyond mischief and distraction.”
He said that Shettima remains focused on his duties and on supporting the President in achieving the aspirations of Nigerians.
“He does not have the luxury of time for distractions, particularly those born of the imagination of individuals intent on creating smoke where there is no fire.
“He’s not and will never partake in their media circus. It is a futile pursuit, even by the standards of the morally indifferent.”
