The race for 2027 is officially underway, and President Bola Tinubu has chosen Kaduna as the place to light the touchpaper. On Saturday, the President formally flagged off his re-election campaign before a packed rally ground, coupling the political message with a fresh motorway inauguration and a straight refusal to apologise for the economic pain many households are still feeling. The opposition, unsurprisingly, has answers of its own.
A Rally Meant to Send a Message
Kaduna was deliberate. Hosting the North-West flag-off in a state the ruling party has treated as a political fortress, the President used the megaphone of a full campaign rally to defend his record on reforms and to paint the years before him as the real authors of Nigeria’s poverty. He promised, in his words, to keep fighting corruption, choke off fuel smuggling and widen the path to prosperity if voters hand him a second term.
The crowd was the story on the ground. Party organisers bussed in supporters from across the North-West, and officials close to the campaign described the turnout as proof that the President’s support has not been dented by the cost-of-living squeeze. The Information and National Orientation Minister, Mohammed Idris, hailed the rally as evidence that Nigerians, in his words, love the President.
The Highway as a Campaign Prop
Before a single campaign speech was delivered, there was a ribbon to cut. The President used the occasion to inaugurate the completed 81-kilometre Abuja–Kaduna highway, folding infrastructure delivery directly into the campaign narrative. The symbolism was intentional: roads delivered versus, as he framed it, opponents who created poverty. For a campaign that will be judged against living costs, pointing at fresh concrete is a strategy — and expect it to repeat in every state the train stops.
Opposition Fires Back on Two Fronts
Atiku: blaming the opposition for hunger is “delusion”
The former Vice-President’s camp rejected the poverty blame game in blunt terms, insisting that pointing at the opposition while citizens go hungry is, as Atiku Abubakar put it, delusion. His argument: the ruling party has held the purse and the policy levers for well over two years, and the hunger on the street belongs to no one else.
ADC: “learn from Macron”
The African Democratic Congress went a step further, accusing the President of lacking empathy for struggling Nigerians and telling him to take a lesson from France’s Emmanuel Macron, who has lately been forced to confront public anger head-on. Whether the jab lands or boomerangs, it signals the tone of the campaign ahead: personal, noisy and fought street by street.
What the Kaduna Flag-Off Sets Up
Three things to watch as the train moves on. First, whether the President’s promises on smuggling and corruption come with visible enforcement, because that is where sceptics will aim. Second, how the opposition coalition holds together under the pressure of primaries and money — that story is already rumbling. Third, the ground war: mobilisation is where vehicles, Ward structures and youth leaders will matter, and that particular argument has already sparked its own controversy this weekend.
For voters, the practical takeaway is simpler: the campaign season will flood every zone with rallies, promises and traffic. Your permanent voter card is the one instrument that matters in all of it — our step-by-step guide on getting your PVC and the registration deadlines covers what to do now.
Final Word
Saturday in Kaduna was the starting gun, not the race. The President left town with a highway inaugurated, a stadium of supporters and a message of patience; the opposition left with its talking points sharpened. Between now and February, the argument moves to your doorstep. Keep our coverage of the APC convention and the President’s unity message, the governors resisting the opposition’s rainbow coalition, and the Obi–Makinde rapprochement testing the coalition in view — together they sketch the battlefield this rally just opened.
