By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
ABUJA — The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign for the re-election of President Bola Tinubu will be formally inaugurated on October 14, with the campaign officially kicking off in Kaduna on October 24.
The Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, disclosed this after meeting with Tinubu at the State House, Abuja, saying the President had approved a timetable for campaign visits to states ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Yari, a former governor of Zamfara State, said the campaign organisation would be inaugurated at the State House Banquet Hall on Wednesday, October 14, while the official flag-off would take place in Kaduna 10 days later.
“The President asked for me to come and brief him on where we are, and to discuss the timetable for the state visits,” Yari said.
“By God’s grace, his team, I, and Mr President himself, we have agreed on how it’s going to be done. We have put forward a proposal.”
He said the campaign would move to Port Harcourt, Rivers State, after the Kaduna flag-off, before proceeding to Maiduguri, Borno State.
Yari added that the full itinerary would be made public after the inauguration, noting that the proposed visits had been approved by the President and the campaign team.
“By God’s grace, on the 24th of October, we’re going to do our flag-off campaign in Kaduna, inshallah,” he said. “Then we outlined our state visits to each and every place where we will go, and then the President has approved them.”
On the prospects of opposition presidential candidates Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Yari dismissed their chances of defeating Tinubu, arguing that a presidential candidate needed nationwide support to win.
He claimed that Tinubu had the backing of more than 20 states across the country, while challenging the opposition candidates to demonstrate comparable support beyond their respective regions.
“Can the ADC candidate today in the southern part of the country beat his chest and say he has control of one state in the South? And I don’t think Peter Obi, who used to be my colleague, can beat his chest and say he has control of one state in northern Nigeria,” Yari said.
He argued that strong support in one region would not be sufficient to secure victory in a presidential election without support from other parts of the country.
Yari cited the 2011 presidential election, when the late former President Muhammadu Buhari secured substantial support in northern Nigeria but lost the national contest, to support his argument about the importance of a broad geographical spread.
The former governor also defended Tinubu’s record in office, saying the APC would campaign on what it considered the administration’s achievements rather than promises.
“President Bola Tinubu, since the time he assumed office, has turned around the situation that he met on ground; still, the economy is moving,” he said.
“So I think we have done enough that we can tell our opponents about what we did.
“We are not promising. We are doing it, and we are going to continue.”
Yari was appointed Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council in August 2026 to coordinate the party’s mobilisation for Tinubu’s re-election bid.
