Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of panicking over the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)’s support in northern Nigeria, as President Bola Tinubu formally launched his re-election campaign in Kaduna on Saturday. Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, made the claim in a statement titled “Why Atiku Abubakar Is Particularly Jittery About the Kaduna Flag-off”. The rally at the Kaduna Township Stadium opens the APC’s presidential campaign less than three months before Nigerians vote on January 16, 2027.
Keyamo alleged that Atiku, now the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), had launched an online offensive against the APC in the North ahead of the rally. He claimed that videos showing Tinubu’s posters being torn down were staged, describing the method as a “common but cheap tactic” of positioning cameras and paying people to remove the posters. He also dismissed as fake a letter claiming that ₦2.3 trillion had been set aside for the Kaduna event. Keyamo did not provide evidence for either allegation in the statement.
At the heart of the minister’s argument is a regional calculation. He claimed Atiku had been counting on the bulk of northern votes because he had no real foothold in the South, adding that the national mood favoured the South completing eight years in the presidency. With APC structures in the North backing Tinubu, Keyamo said, that calculation was falling apart. He described Atiku as “a butterfly that thinks it is a bird” and said the former Vice President wrongly saw himself as the Buhari of 2015.
The statement came on the same day the APC Presidential Campaign Council, through its spokesperson Dele Alake, accused Atiku and the ADC of plotting to discredit the rally with fabricated documents, manipulated images and AI-generated content. The APC said the ₦2.3 trillion letter, purportedly written by Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani to campaign Director General Abdulaziz Yari, was forged. Atiku had earlier criticised what he described as the deployment of security personnel to protect Tinubu’s billboards in Kaduna, a claim the APC said had been twisted.
The ADC rejected the accusations. Phrank Shaibu, its Director of Strategic Communication, described the APC’s reaction as a “desperate and hollow smokescreen” from a campaign he said was afraid of its own record. He insisted that the ruling party was using the allegations to divert attention from its handling of the economy.
The 2023 presidential results offer a useful test of Keyamo’s claims. According to figures declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu won with 8,794,726 votes, ahead of Atiku with 6,984,520, Peter Obi with 6,101,533 and Rabiu Kwankwaso with 1,496,687. Tinubu and Atiku each carried 12 states, Obi took 11 states and the Federal Capital Territory, while Kwankwaso won only Kano.
Keyamo’s claim that Atiku lost every North-Central state is consistent with INEC’s figures. Tinubu won Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Niger, while Obi took Plateau, Nasarawa and the FCT. However, his assertion that Atiku lost every southern state except Osun is not borne out by the record, as Atiku also won Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa in the South-South.
The northern picture was more divided than either camp’s rhetoric suggests. Atiku won five of the six North-East states, losing only Borno to Tinubu, but carried just four of the seven North-West states: Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi and Sokoto. Tinubu took Jigawa and Zamfara, while Kwankwaso won Kano, the region’s largest voting state. Some margins were razor thin. In Sokoto, Atiku polled 288,679 votes against Tinubu’s 285,444, a gap of just 3,235.
Kaduna, the venue of Saturday’s rally, was one of Atiku’s stronger states in 2023. He polled 554,360 votes there, against 399,293 for Tinubu, 294,494 for Obi and 92,969 for Kwankwaso. That 155,067 vote lead partly explains why both parties are treating the state as a symbolic battleground.
Keyamo’s comparison with Muhammadu Buhari points to a very different election. In 2015, Buhari defeated incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan with 15,424,921 votes to 12,853,162, winning 21 states on the back of near total dominance in the North-West and North-East. No candidate came close to that level of regional consolidation in 2023, when the northern vote was split three ways.
The arithmetic for 2027 is also shaped by the constitutional threshold. A winning candidate must secure the highest number of votes and at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in two-thirds of the 36 states and the FCT. That requirement means no candidate can win on the strength of one region alone, a point both camps are now testing as campaigning moves into the North.