26 May, 2026.
Listen closely, northern brother. You have been sold a story. A story that a southern president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, deserves your loyalty, your vote, and your sacrifice. But the same southern political establishment that demands your support has openly declared that any southerner who dares to oppose their leader is an enemy of the South-West.
On May 24, 2026, Olusegun Osoba, a former governor of Ogun State and a close ally of President Tinubu, stood before party stakeholders in Abeokuta and issued a stark warning. The enemies are many, he said. According to Osoba, there is a political gang-up against Tinubu in the South ahead of the 2027 presidential election, a plot to field multiple candidates from the southern region to divide votes and reduce the Presidents chances at the polls. He named names: Peter Obi has emerged, Goodluck Jonathan is quietly waiting in the background, and Seyi Makinde has been grandstanding. All these appear to be attempts to divide votes from the South, Osoba declared. He urged APC members not to take victory for granted, insisting that the real election would be fought next January .
Just days earlier, Tunde Rahman, a media aide to President Tinubu, had weighed in on Governor Seyi Makinde's presidential ambition. In a commentary published on May 17, 2026, Rahman warned that Makinde risked being seen as an enemy of the South-West for daring to challenge Tinubu in 2027. He argued that Makindes decision to run against a fellow South-Western incumbent was an ill-advised adventure that might turn the region against him, and questioned whether the governor possessed any strong political base outside of Ibadan .
And President Tinubu himself has joined this chorus. On April 29, 2026, while addressing stakeholders from Plateau State at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, he declared: You are playing to the hand of agents, including my own enemies, who want to use insecurity to get rid of me. But Im a very stubborn politician. I just refuse to go. And I will campaign for my second term.
So the message from the top echelons of the South-West political landscape could not be clearer. Any southerner who works against Tinubu is an enemy. Any opposition from within the South is a gang-up. The 2027 election, in their framing, is a battle between the South and those who would dare to divide southern votes. They are fully aware of the plans. They see the coming contest as a war.
Now, here is the uncomfortable question that the marketers of Tinubu in the North refuse to answer. If every southerner who works against Tinubu is an enemy of the South-West, what exactly does that make you? You, a northerner, working for him. Not just working for him, but defending him, marketing him, asking your people to ignore their suffering and vote for him again. If southerners who oppose him are traitors to their region, are you not also a traitor to yours? Or does loyalty only flow one way?
Let us look at the facts of the last three years. Security was meant to be a cornerstone of this administration. Instead, the North has bled. According to ACLED data covering May 2023 to May 2025, terror groups alone killed 7,472 people and abducted 12,584 in two years. In the first half of 2025, Nigeria recorded 4,672 security incidents and 6,800 fatalities, a figure that already surpassed the full-year 2024 death toll . Between 2023 and May 2025, at least 10,217 people were killed by armed groups in northern Nigeria. The northwest region alone recorded 2,938 abductions between July 2024 and June 2025, representing over 60 percent of national totals . In November 2025, at least 402 people, predominantly schoolchildren, were kidnapped across four north-central states in a single month. In the first quarter of 2026, tracking data reveals that at least 2,063 people were killed across Nigeria, with rural banditry remaining the main driver of violent incidents, accounting for at least 739 distinct deaths .
Even the South-West, long considered relatively peaceful, is now feeling the heat. In May 2026, students, teachers, and a school principal were abducted from three schools in Oyo States Oriire Local Government Area. A Yoruba socio-cultural group, Igbimo Majekobaje Ile-Yoruba, condemned the incident as a grave failure of government at all levels, stating that terrorists have increasingly taken control of parts of the Southwest, threatening the regions historically peaceful environment . The storm has reached the gate even if it has not yet fully entered the house.
Illiteracy is another wound that festers across the North. According to UNICEF data from 2025, Nigeria has more than 18 million out-of-school children, comprising 10.2 million of primary age and 8.1 million of junior secondary age. Vulnerable children under the Almajiri system, prevalent in the northern states, constitute a significant percentage of this total . The Goodluck Jonathan administration had initiated the concept of Almajiri schools, but the project was abandoned and has yet to be revived by the current government . While the federal government announces billions for technology hubs and coastal highways, the Almajiri system expands without a coherent national plan, and northern schools remain underfunded, understaffed, and in many cases closed due to insecurity.
Poverty and food insecurity have become the defining features of northern existence under this administration. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, 34.7 million Nigerians face acute food insecurity at Crisis Phase 3 or higher by mid-2026 . A FEWS NET report from October 2025 confirms that in northern Nigeria, conflict continues to drive displacement, disrupt livelihood and market activities, and constrain access to income and farmland, leading to widespread Crisis outcomes. In inaccessible areas of the North East, Emergency conditions are likely to persist as households face severely limited mobility, poor market access, and minimal to no harvests .
Now let us talk about infrastructure. On February 11, 2026, Works Minister David Umahi told lawmakers that the ministrys 2026 capital budget stands at N3.244 trillion, with the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway listed as top legacy projects . The Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, a 1,068-kilometre project originating from Illela in Sokoto State at the Nigeria-Niger Republic border and traversing Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, and terminating at Badagry in Lagos State, is indeed a northern project in name . But ask yourself this. How many kilometres of that road have been completed in the North versus the South? How much of the N3.2 trillion works budget is actually flowing into northern soil? Meanwhile, the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway consumes trillions. The railway lines crisscross the South-West while the North relies on dilapidated roads that bandits have turned into toll points.
From 1999 to 2027, if President Tinubu completes his term, the South would have ruled Nigeria for eighteen years. The North would have ruled for only ten. Eighteen versus ten. Olusegun Obasanjo, eight years. Goodluck Jonathan, five years if you count his completion of YarAduas term, though many argue six. Bola Tinubu, eight years if he finishes his second term. That is eighteen to twenty years of southern presidency. The North has had Umaru YarAdua, three years, and Muhammadu Buhari, eight years. That is eleven years, or fewer depending on how you count YarAduas tenure. And yet, northerners are still being asked to rally around a southern president who has done so little for them that his own southern allies now see the 2027 election as a war between the South and the North.
So here are the difficult questions for every Tinubu marketer in the North. If after three years of worsening insecurity, rising illiteracy, deepening poverty, and a complete neglect of northern infrastructure, you still choose to market this president to your people, who are you? If after hearing the most powerful voices in the South-West declare that any southerner who opposes their man is an enemy of their region, you still ask northerners to die for that same man, what does that make you? If the South is ready to go to war with the North to keep Tinubu in power, and you stand on the side of the South, are you not an enemy of the North?
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot celebrate the regional loyalty of the South-West while demanding that the North abandon its own interests. You cannot call southern opposition leaders enemies while expecting northerners who suffer under this government to remain silent and loyal. At some point, a northerner working for Tinubu is no longer a bridge builder. He is a collaborator. He is helping a southern political machine drain the North of its votes, its resources, and its dignity while receiving nothing in return.
The South-West has made its position clear. The enemy is anyone who stands in the way of their man. So again, we ask. If every southerner working against Tinubu is an enemy of the South-West, what about northerners working for him? In the eyes of the North, in the eyes of your suffering people, you know the answer. The only question is whether you will admit it before the ballots are cast.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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Opinion