The Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, has appealed to Northern leaders to galvanise support for President Bola Tinubu to enable him to secure a fresh mandate in the presidential election next January.
Senator Shettima made the appeal on Monday while playing host to a forum, Arewa for Tinubu (A4A), a northern-based think tank working for the re-election of President Tinubu.
The Vice President maintained that the North should feel secure if Tinubu got re-elected, noting that the region had benefitted immensely in terms of appointments and game-changing projects and programmes.
He said: ”Let’s unite as a people and work for the development of our region and the progress of our people through the re-election of this administration. We are benefiting and we stand to benefit more from this government in many ways.
“The Bank of Agriculture has disbursed N450 billion to 700,000 smallholder farmers in Nigeria and about 70 percent of the beneficiaries are from the north.
“The present administration is working towards completing landmark and ground breaking projects in parts of the country. I can assure you that the president loves the north and the president will work for the north.”
The Vice President thanked the group for their steadfast support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at all times and appealed to them to work harder and galvanise across wards, communities and local governments in the northern region for the President’s re-election.
Earlier in his remarks, the Director-General of Arewa for Asiwaju and former Jigawa State Governor, Abubakar Badaru, said the organisation would not rest on its oars until it made the North proud by re-electing President Tinubu.
He said the group planned to meet with religious leaders, including Muslim and Christian clerics, as well as other prominent Nigerians, to explain to them the need to support the Tinubu/Shettima ticket in 2027.
“On discussions with the high profile, we have gone far. We have met them severally and the BoT is meeting them again to consolidate our gains and to tell them why there is need to support this ticket.
“We are also supporting the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) with whatever they want us to do that is micro in nature because they are so big and we really don’t want to lose sight of the bigger arrangement that is there. We want to focus very well on the contacts at the grassroots – the local government areas and the wards.”
Former Kano State Governor and Chairman of the organisation’s Board of Trustees (BoT), Ibrahim Shekarau, said the think tank, which worked for President Tinubu’s election in the 2023 general election, would repeat the same feat in 2027.
He said the organisation had been meeting with northern governors and other stakeholders to compare notes and collaborate on areas of working together to achieve the President’s re-election.
He noted that the organisation had concluded plans to have a full-fledged secretariat for purposes of coordination, where there would be offices for directors and where state coordinators would compare reports, analyse them and give out instructions to its members
