October 24, 2026
Press Statement
Tinubu’s Campaign Flag-Off a Total Flop, Carnival of Deceit and Lies -MDPCO …Scanty Attendance Despite N2.3 trillion Mobilization shows Nigerians Cannot be Bought …Urges Tinubu to Step Down for More Competent Makinde
The Makinde-Daura Presidential Campaign Organisation (MDPCO) says that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential campaign flag-off in Kaduna is another carnival of deceit, recycled lies and brazen political fraud.
It is desperate attempt to sell repackage failed promises and fresh illusions to the North, a region battered by insecurity, crushed by hardship and betrayed by President Tinubu’s government which is now on its fours begging for re-election.
The Tinubu campaign flag-off, which turned a show of shame is truth foretold. Nigerians will recall that the MDPCO had in a press statement on Friday stated that the All Progressives Congress (APC) can only go to Kaduna with cartons of lies as President Tinubu has nothing to present to the North which has waited in vain for him in the last three and half years.
Recall too that we predicted that the President’s campaign speech in Kaduna will be empty. Not disappointing, it turned hollower than we thought. What did the president offer? Nothing beyond stale triumphalism and self-congratulation.
As usual, President Tinubu chorused “prosperity, continuity and progress” yet offered the North and Nigerians no convincing reasons they should endure more of the hardship his administration has presided over since May 2023.
The MDPCO condemns the shameless attempt by the President to blame the opposition for the pervasive hunger and poverty in the land. What a bold evasion of responsibility from a failed President who plunged Nigeria into an unprecedented economic crisis that she now competes alongside Afghanistan in the axis of failed nations.
President Tinubu also promised young Nigerians “a better tomorrow”. The same youths who his incompetent management of the economy threw into joblessness, desperation and disillusionment. Some of them who made bold to protest against hunger in August 2024 including minors, were hauled from the streets of Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Gombe among others states to Abuja, cramped into detention and charged for treason.
The Kaduna comedy of absurd came to a peak when a Commander-in-Chief who claimed to have dealt with insecurity in the North could not visit a claimed project site but resorted to commissioning an inherited, partially constructed 88 km stretch of the Abuja -Kaduna High way inside the stadium holding the rally. It is either the President was afraid of insecurity or fears the boiling volcano of popular anger against his failed government.
Moreover, a section is not the entire Abuja–Kaduna–Kano Expressway, and a commissioning ceremony is no substitute for full delivery. President Tinubu cannot claim the whole when he is commissioning a part. He cannot turn an inherited project into personal glory.
In any event, the scanty attendance by a rented unresponsive crowd even after the APC deployed a staggering N2.3 trillion on mobilization not only shows that Nigerians cannot be bought but also further confirms that the APC’s plan to financially induce voters in the 2027 election is dead on arrival.
At this point, nobody is still in doubt that the APC presidential campaign is headed for the rocks and nothing can save it. The decision to flood Kaduna with security forces during the flag-off is a telling response to the growing rejection by the people. A government confident of its popularity does not need to turn a campaign rally into a security operation.
The APC should know that at the moment, no amount of intimidation, militarization or show of force can save President Tinubu from an imminent electoral defeat.
Given the clear confirmation of rejection by Nigerians, the MDPCO, for the umpteenth time, counsels President Tinubu to withdraw from the race and support the flagbearer of the Allied People's Movement (APM), Engr Seyi Makinde who is more popular as Nigerian continue to embrace his RESET NIGERIA Agenda which is the only option to salvage our nation from the misrule of the APC.
Signed;
Richard Nnanna Ihediwa Director of Strategic Communications