Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development and spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress (APC) 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, Dele Alake, has explained why President Bola Tinubu will only visit 12 states for his re-election campaign.
Alake said the 12 states were carefully selected because they are election deciders that will determine the outcome of the 2027 presidential poll.
He stated this during an interview on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), while defending the President’s decision to limit his physical campaign appearances.
According to Alake, Tinubu, as a sitting President, cannot afford to abandon governance to campaign across all 36 states, unlike in 2023 when he was not the incumbent.
“And what has he done? He has chosen some states, zonal pivotal states, to visit. And if you were to do a serious empirical verification of those zones and states, you find out that those places he’s chosen to go are actually deciders, election deciders, those states,” Alake said.
He added that the President should be commended for choosing to balance governance with campaigning.
Alake noted that some sections of the media had misinterpreted Tinubu’s statement to mean he would not campaign at all.
“I would not overwhelm the attention or suppress the attention to other issues of national importance. That’s why the president said categorically at the inauguration of the campaign council a few days ago that we should excuse him, that he’s not going to abandon governance for campaigning.
“Of course there’s also the, you know, negative section of the media that screamed, oh Tinubu will not go everywhere, oh Tinubu will not campaign and stuff like that. No, because the president has a lot on his plate,” he said.
He described the burden of the presidency as enormous and said Tinubu’s resilience is unparalleled.
He stressed that the situation in 2023 was different as Tinubu was not in office then.
“The weight on his shoulders is enormous, and I admire him a lot. Why? Because his resilience, his stamina; he’s unparalleled.
“Ashiwaju was not a sitting president in 2023. He wasn’t. So he could afford all the time in the world to go to every corner of the nation. But when you’re a sitting president with so much work to do, no, you cannot,” he added.
Alake argued that Tinubu would have been criticised either way if he had chosen to leave governance for full-blown campaigns.
The APC campaign is scheduled to kick off in Kaduna on October 24, 2026, and end with a grand rally in Lagos on January 9, 2027, with the President billed to attend rallies in only 12 strategic states.
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