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As DG Of APC Presidential Campaign
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The Inside Story
Right now, all eyes are on Senator Abdulaziz Abubakar Yari. Over the last few days, many have been wondering why Pres. Tinubu made him head his presidential campaign. His story shows how loyalty, northern reach, party experience and a relationship built over years influenced President Tinubu’s decision to put the former Zamfara governor in charge of his 2027 re-election machinery
Many political analysts say President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s decision to appoint Senator Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari as Director-General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council for the 2027 election is one of the most politically significant appointments made by the ruling party as it prepares for what promises to be a fiercely contested presidential election.
On the surface, Yari may appear to be an unexpected choice because he is not a serving governor and was not the most obvious name among the governors who could have been considered for such a powerful position.
But a closer examination of Yari’s political career reveals why the appointment makes strategic sense.
For Tinubu, the 2027 election is about building a political machine capable of navigating the complicated realities of the North, managing APC’s competing interests, mobilising governors and party structures, and keeping potentially restive political blocs within the ruling party. Yari brings experience in virtually all of these areas.
Many don’t know that Abdul’aziz Yari is a party politics veteran. He has gone through a lot.
His political career stretches back to the era of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), where he served as Zamfara State chairman and later National Financial Secretary before moving into elective politics. He represented Anka/Talata Mafara Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011 before becoming Governor of Zamfara State.
He served as Governor from 2011 to 2019 and later became a Senator representing Zamfara West.
More importantly, Yari has operated at several levels of politics, from the local, state, national, legislative to the executive.
He also served as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, succeeding former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi in 2015. That position gave him an unusually broad network among governors and political leaders across the country. That network is potentially invaluable to Tinubu in 2027.
Perhaps, the most obvious reason for Yari’s selection is his extensive political reach in Northern Nigeria. Yari comes from Zamfara, one of the key states in the North-West, and has spent decades cultivating relationships with politicians, traditional institutions, religious leaders and grassroots political structures.
The North-West remains one of the most important battlegrounds in any Nigerian presidential election.
For 2027, the APC will need to protect and potentially expand its Northern support while simultaneously defending the gains it made elsewhere.
That makes someone with Yari’s Northern credentials particularly valuable.
One of Yari’s greatest assets is that his political network does not stop at Zamfara.
His tenure as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum exposed him to governors from virtually every part of Nigeria.
That experience matters because presidential campaigns are ultimately coalitions of thousands of political actors.
Governors control important political structures like:.
Senators and members of the House of Representatives have influence within their constituencies.
Party chairmen control organisational structures.
Traditional rulers and community leaders influence local opinion.
Political financiers provide resources.
Youth and women groups drive grassroots mobilisation.
A campaign director-general must therefore be more than a public speaker.
He must be a negotiator, organiser, bridge-builder and political troubleshooter.
Yari has spent years operating in that environment.
“Yari did not join Nigerian politics yesterday,” explained one political analyst. “He was involved in party administration long before the APC was formed. He served in the ANPP before becoming a member of the APC following the emergence of the coalition that produced the ruling party.”
His experience gives him an understanding of how political parties actually function..
That experience could become particularly important as APC moves towards the 2027 election.
The ruling party is not a monolithic organisation.
There are governors with their own political ambitions, senators with competing interests, old party loyalists, newcomers, former opposition politicians and powerful regional blocs.
Yari understands that political ecosystem.
Beyond political arithmetic, another issue may have influenced Tinubu’s decision — Loyalty.
Yari has had his own ambitions within the political sphere.
In 2023, he contested for the President of the Senate. He ultimately lost the contest.
What happened afterwards is politically important.
Rather than becoming a permanent opponent of the Tinubu administration, Yari remained within the APC political structure.
Recent reporting has suggested that his standing with the Presidency increased after the Senate presidency contest because he did not become part of a sustained anti-Tinubu rebellion. Loyalty and independence are 2 factors being cited around his emergence as Campaign DG.
For a president heading into a difficult re-election battle, that can be an important quality.
Political leaders remember not only who supported them when they were winning, but also who remained with them when political calculations changed.
Tinubu and Yari have occupied the same political space for many years, particularly through the evolution of Nigeria’s opposition coalition and the APC.
Tinubu was one of the central figures in the coalition-building process that produced the APC in 2013, while Yari was already an established northern political leader within the ANPP/APC tradition. Tinubu had also developed extensive relationships with northern political leaders through his long involvement in national opposition politics.
The relationship between the 2 men therefore grew within a broader political network rather than from a single event. It was a relationship shaped by the APC project, national political negotiations, governors’ interactions and the changing alliances of Nigerian politics.
That history helps explain why Yari could eventually become useful to Tinubu even though the 2 men did not always occupy identical political positions.
Tinubu’s ability to work with northern political actors was one of the foundations of his eventual presidential ambition.
Yari, meanwhile, developed relationships with politicians outside his immediate Zamfara base. This makes the Tinubu-Yari relationship part of a much larger story — the evolution of the APC from a coalition of opposition forces into Nigeria’s dominant ruling party.
Yari’s job will be to translate the President’s political message into Votes.
Tinubu’s 2027 strategy requires a delicate balance.
He needs strong support in the South-West, where he has his strongest traditional base. He needs to retain sufficient support in the South-South and South-East to remain nationally competitive.
He needs to protect his position in the North-West. And he needs to prevent opposition forces from consolidating the northern electorate against him.
Yari is particularly relevant to this equation because of his Northern background and political contacts.
Another reason Yari is valuable is his history with governors. As former Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, he understands the psychology of governors. He knows what governors want.
He understands their strengths. He knows the importance of state-level political structures. And he knows that a presidential campaign cannot succeed by relying exclusively on Abuja-based politicians. Governors will be central to the 2027 campaign.
Another strategic advantage is that Yari is not a sitting governor preparing for his own election. This gives him more time to focus on the presidential campaign. The APC’s governors will have state-level responsibilities.
They will have their own political calculations. They will be defending their administrations or managing succession battles. Yari, by contrast, can concentrate on the national campaign. That distinction may have been important in Tinubu’s calculations.
There is also a powerful political message in the appointment. Tinubu is a southern president seeking re-election. Putting a respected northern politician at the operational centre of his presidential campaign sends a message of inclusion to the North.
It says that the campaign is not being designed as a purely southern project. Yari’s appointment therefore carries both practical and symbolic value.
It gives the APC a northern face without removing the President and Vice President from overall control.
The real test will be whether he can transform his political relationships into actual votes. That is a very different challenge.
Ultimately, Tinubu appears to be betting on 4 qualities in Yari: His network. His northern reach. His political experience. And his Loyalty..
