2027: Why Tinubu is betting on Yari as the opposition fragments

The president has absorbed much of the political machinery that opposed him in 2023. But his choice of Abdulaziz Yari to run his reelection campaign shows where President Bola Tinubu still sees danger – in the North.

Tinubu’s first campaign council for the 2027 election reads less like an All Progressives Congress (APC) organogram than an inventory of the political forces he has absorbed since taking office.

Sheriff Oborevwori, elected Delta governor on the opposition Peoples Democratic Party ticket in 2023, is its finance director and treasurer. Former PDP vice-presidential candidate Ifeanyi Okowa appears in stakeholder mobilisation.

So does Umo Eno, the Akwa Ibom governor elected on a PDP ticket. Anyim Pius Anyim, the former PDP Senate president and presidential aspirant, has been handed responsibility for stakeholder mobilisation in the South East.

Even Nyesom Wike, the Federal Capital Territory minister who remains formally in the PDP, does not need a place on the list. He says a cross-party “rainbow coalition” is being assembled for Tinubu and has promised to deliver Rivers State and the FCT.

The initial list, released on 22 August, is being reviewed after complaints about omissions and controversial inclusions. But its political message is unlikely to change. Three years after winning the presidency with just 36.6% of the vote, Tinubu has spent much of his first term not competing with the opposition but dismantling the networks that sustained it.

A shrinking opposition

The APC now controls 31 of Nigeria’s 36 states, up from about 19 immediately after the 2023 election. Governors, lawmakers and former opposition grandees have crossed into Tinubu’s camp, while the PDP that dominated Nigerian politics for 16 years after the return to democracy has splintered.

The opposition that remains is divided much as it was in 2023. Atiku Abubakar, who finished second last time, has secured the African Democratic Congress ticket after a primary rejected by rivals Rotimi Amaechi and Mohammed Hayatu-Deen. The ADC itself is divided, with a rival faction selecting Dumebi Kachikwu. Peter Obi, meanwhile, has joined forces with Rabiu Kwankwaso on the Nigeria Democratic Congress ticket.

That fragmentation matters because 2023 demonstrated how narrow Tinubu’s underlying electoral coalition was. He won 8.79 million votes, against Atiku’s 6.98 million and Obi’s 6.1 million, with Kwankwaso taking another 1.5 million. An opposition capable of combining even part of those constituencies would pose a different threat.

Tinubu’s choice of Yari to run his campaign suggests he knows where that threat is most acute.

Yari, a former two-term governor of Zamfara and chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum from 2015 to 2019, is an archetypal North West political operator.

His appointment as campaign director-general gives him authority over a machine whose northern side also includes Kaduna governor Uba Sani as North West coordinator, Yobe governor Mai Mala Buni and senior legislators Tajudeen Abbas and Barau Jibrin.

The Yari bet

The arithmetic explains the concentration of firepower. The North West was the largest reservoir of votes for Tinubu in 2023: he collected about 2.65m there, more than the 2.28m he won in his South West home base. But Atiku took about 2.33m North West votes and Kwankwaso another 1.27m. Together, the two northern challengers comfortably outpolled Tinubu across the zone.

In other words, Tinubu’s success in the North West depended partly on his opponents dividing a much larger pool of votes. In 2027, Kwankwaso will try to add his Kano-centred movement to Obi’s southern and urban following, while Atiku again seeks to mobilise his longstanding northern base.

Yari is more than a campaign administrator. His political value lies in his ability to organise elites and negotiate across factions. In 2023 he defied Tinubu and the APC leadership by contesting the Senate presidency against their preferred candidate, Godswill Akpabio. He lost, but still collected 46 votes to Akpabio’s 63 – evidence that he could assemble a substantial bloc inside a party establishment lined up against him.

Tinubu’s decision to put that former internal rebel in charge is characteristic. Rather than permanently exclude effective rivals, he has repeatedly sought to accommodate or absorb them.

The danger for the president is that control of the political class is not the same thing as control of the electorate.

Governors bring money, local structures and access to political networks. They do not necessarily bring their voters with them. Obi’s 2023 campaign showed that a candidate can mobilise millions with relatively little support from incumbent governors. Kwankwaso’s performance in Kano demonstrated the durability of a highly personalised political machine. Tinubu goes into 2027 defending an economic record shaped by high living costs and years of painful reforms.

Wike argues that there is effectively “no opposition”. That may be a reasonable description of the balance among Nigeria’s political elites. It is harder to say the same of voters.

Political analyst Liborous Oshoma expects the fragmented field itself to depress participation. “I foresee voter apathy. People will believe their votes will not make a difference because the opposition vote has been split,” he says. “That is why some people are angry with Atiku in the South, while others are angry with Obi in the North.”

Oshoma believes incumbency makes the calculation still more favourable to Tinubu. “When the president was out of power, he was able to win the election,” he says. “How much more now that he commands the structures, including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)?” (The Africa Report)