Opposition political parties, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), have accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of “staging a disappointing Northwest flag-off,” saying Nigerians will reject Tinubu in 2027
However, the Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka, said the comments by the two political parties did not deserve any response from him
“Nigerians watch the flag off and know what happened,” he simply said
The ADC Presidential Campaign Council described the APC rally in Kaduna as a “monumental disappointment,” accusing the ruling party of relying on rented crowds, empty seats, and recycled promises
Director of Media and Publicity of the ADC-PCC, Kola Ologbondiyan, said an event intended to demonstrate the APC’s political strength across the Northwest had instead exposed what he described as the “party’s declining public acceptance”
Ologbondiyan alleged that the APC mobilised people from the seven states of the Northwest and beyond, with payments reportedly ranging from N50,000 to N100,000 per person, yet the stadium, with a capacity of 5,000, remained sparsely occupied
“For a rally billed as the Northwest zonal flag-off, what we witnessed was a shameful spectacle Despite the alleged mobilisation of crowds from across the zone and beyond, the stadium remained scantily filled, with empty seats everywhere,” he said.
The ADC-PCC Director also criticised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reported commissioning of road projects at the event, describing the exercise as troubling and questioning the administration’s claims of performance
In the same vein, the APM and the Makinde-Daura Presidential Campaign Organisation (MDPCO) said President Tinubu’s flag-off in Kaduna is another carnival of deceit, “recycled lies, and brazen political fraud”
Richard Ihediwa, Director of Strategic Communications of the Makinde/Daura campaign, said the campaign was a desperate attempt to “sell repackaged failed promises and fresh illusions to the North, a region battered by insecurity, crushed by hardship, and betrayed by President Tinubu’s government, which is now on its fours begging for re-election”
The campaign said as usual, “President Tinubu chorused ‘prosperity, continuity and progress,’ yet offered the North and Nigerians no convincing reasons they should endure more of the hardship his administration has presided over since May 2023”
The MDPCO also condemned the attempt by the president to blame the “opposition for the pervasive hunger and poverty in the land What a bold evasion of responsibility from a failed President who plunged Nigeria into an unprecedented economic crisis, such that she now competes alongside Afghanistan in the axis of failed nations.”
It added, “President Tinubu also promised young Nigerians ‘a better tomorrow’ The same youths whom his incompetent management of the economy threw into joblessness, desperation, and disillusionment. Some of them who made bold to protest against hunger in August 2024, including minors, were hauled from the streets of Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Gombe, among other states, to Abuja, cramped into detention, and charged with treason.
“The Kaduna comedy of absurdities came to a peak when a Commander-in-Chief who claimed to have dealt with insecurity in the North could not visit a claimed project site, but resorted to commissioning an inherited, partially constructed 88 km stretch of the Abuja-Kaduna Highway inside the stadium holding the rally It is either the President was afraid of insecurity or fears the boiling volcano of popular anger against his failed government.
“At this point, nobody is still in doubt that the APC presidential campaign is headed for the rocks and nothing can save it The decision to flood Kaduna with security forces during the flag-off is a telling response to the growing rejection by the people. A government confident of its popularity does not need to turn a campaign rally into a security operation.”