Tinubu Has Named His Campaign Council, And One Name Is Already In Court
Abuja · Sunday 23 August 2026
The APC Presidential Campaign Council list came out on Saturday. Bola Tinubu chairs it. Kashim Shettima is vice chairman. Abdulaziz Yari, the former Zamfara governor, is Director-General, with Femi Faleke and Aminu Masari as his deputies. Hope Uzodimma is Secretary.
That last appointment is the one to watch, and not because of the job itself.
The Uzodimma problem
Governor Uzodimma of Imo State is currently a defendant in a Federal High Court suit filed by Rochas Okorocha on 13 August, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1854/2026, over the APC ticket for the Imo West senatorial district. Okorocha is asking the court to decide whether INEC was right to publish Uzodimma as the party's candidate.
The suit runs on two legs. The first is arithmetic: the party's primary committee declared Uzodimma the winner with 230,464 votes, while a sworn affidavit filed with the case says Okorocha took 150,780 to Uzodimma's 102,158. The second is constitutional, and it is the one with reach. Okorocha argues that a sitting governor is barred by Section 183 of the 1999 Constitution from contesting for the Senate while still in office.
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Chairman | Bola Tinubu |
| Vice chairman | Kashim Shettima |
| Vice chairman | Nentawe Yilwatda, APC national chairman |
| Director-General | Abdulaziz Yari |
| Deputy DGs | Femi Faleke, Aminu Masari |
| Secretary | Hope Uzodimma |
| Lead spokesperson | Dele Alake, with four others |
| Legal director | Muiz Banire, with two deputies |
Principal officers as released on Saturday 22 August 2026.
If the court reads Section 183 broadly, the Secretary of the presidential campaign loses his own senate nomination in the middle of the campaign. That is not fatal to the council, which can replace a secretary in an afternoon. It is awkward in a way campaigns usually try to avoid, and the party knew about the case before the list went out.
Yari is the more interesting appointment
A campaign Director-General in Nigeria is not a figurehead. The DG runs the machine: state coordination, agent deployment, logistics, and the money. Picking a former governor of Zamfara, in a cycle where the North West is the largest single bloc of votes available to any candidate, is a decision about arithmetic rather than about profile.
The two deputies point the same way. Masari is a former Katsina governor. Between Yari, Masari and the President's own base, the council's top table is weighted heavily toward the North West and South West, which is a reasonable read of where 2027 is actually won.
A campaign council list is a map of where a party thinks its votes are. Read it that way and it tells you more than any manifesto.
The criticism started immediately
Within a day the council was being attacked from inside and outside the party. APC chieftain Babafemi Ojudu said publicly that it contains former sinners. The ADC has described it as filled with corruption suspects. The Good Movement Nigeria group called it self-serving and urged voters to reject it.
Some of that is ordinary opposition noise in a campaign period that opened on 19 August and runs 150 days. Ojudu's is harder to file that way, because he is an APC figure and a former presidential aide, and the criticism is aimed at his own side.
What it signals about the shape of the race
The council is large, and Nigerian campaign councils are always large, because they double as a patronage instrument. Naming several hundred people is how a party keeps state structures inside the tent for five months.
Against that, the opposition arrives divided. Atiku Abubakar is on the ADC platform. Peter Obi is the candidate of the NDC. Both have changed platform since 2023 and both have to build state structures from a standing start inside the campaign window. The APC has just published a list that shows it already has one.
That is the real gap this document exposes, and it is not about who chairs what.
Reporting: Vanguard, Premium Times, Sahara Reporters, The Sun Nigeria and Leadership.
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