Tinubu’s 108-man Gamble: Can Yari Deliver a Second Term?

Ikedi Ohakim

It is a gamble on a massive scale – 108 politicians, former party chairmen, serving governors, senators, regional power brokers, veterans of different political generations – all in one council.

At the centre of it, President Bola Tinubu has placed one man: Senator Abdulaziz Yari, Marafan Sokoto.

When presidential aide Bayo Onanuga confirmed Yari as Director-General of the 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, many saw just another appointment. It is more than that. It is Tinubu betting his second term on a politician who has spent 27 years learning how Nigerian power really works.

Yari has lived through every layer – party secretary of ANPP in Zamfara in 1999, state chairman in 2003, National Financial Secretary, House of Representatives in 2007, a two-term governor, Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, and currently a senator.

He is not a product of one political era. He survived them all.

That is why this appointment is different. A 108-man council does not need a commander who shouts orders. It needs a builder who can make competing ambitions walk in the same direction.

Yari has done that job before. In 2015, he inherited a fractured Nigeria Governors’ Forum. Governors were split into factions.

Trust was low. By the time he left, the NGF was the most potent bargaining bloc in the country — negotiating bailouts, Paris Club refunds, and revenue disputes with the federal government as one body.

It was consensus-building at its most difficult. The Forum had APC and PDP governors. North and South. First-termers and old hands. Holding them together required exactly the temperament a presidential campaign needs.

In 2019, he stretched it further, arguing publicly that even PDP governors could work for President Buhari’s re-election because of the state-federal relationship he had nurtured. Controversial, but revealing.

The clearest measure of his national reach came in 2023. In the contest for Senate President, Yari scored 45 votes against Godswill Akpabio’s 63. He lost the gavel, but winning 45 senators from across the federation was proof that his network went far beyond Zamfara.

That is the real test before him now. The first list of the campaign council itself sparked debate before it was reviewed. That alone shows the challenge: turning a long list of big names into a disciplined machine. Modern campaigns are not won at rallies alone. They require data, message discipline, strategic communication, and rapid response.

The second challenge is regional. The APC controls states in the South-East and South-South, but control of Government Houses is not control of votes. Each state has its own fault lines. Building a common front, especially in the South-East, will need more shuttle diplomacy than sloganeering.

For Yari, the stakes could not be higher. This is the most consequential assignment of his career.

Success makes him a national political manager of the first order. Failure will be read as the limits of his method.

But there is a pattern to his rise: party office, legislature, executive, governors’ forum, Senate. Each role demanded a different kind of organisation. The DG job brings all of them together.

The 2027 election will not be won by the loudest voice in the room. It will be won by the machine that can hold governors, senators, party structures and regional interests together longest.

Tinubu has placed his gamble on the man who has spent his life building that machine.

Whether that gamble pays off now depends on Yari — whether he can sell the administration’s record clearly and keep this broad coalition united.

The campaign will not be built on political organisation alone. It will also be built on the administration’s case that its reforms are beginning to yield results.

As the Financial Times observed on May 29, 2025: “…Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State and the country’s wiliest politician in a generation, has stabilised the economy and laid the groundwork for a broader recovery.”

Selling that verdict to Nigerians is the task. Building the machine to sell it is now Yari’s responsibility.

Dr. Ohakim is a chieftain of APC and a former Governor of Imo State.