A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Ayekooto Akindele, has claimed that former presidential candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, is indirectly promoting President Bola Tinubu’s achievements in the North through calculated criticism.
Akindele made the assertion while reacting to Kwankwaso’s recent statement accusing the Tinubu-led administration of neglecting the northern region in favour of the South.
Naijaonpoint reports that the former Kano State governor had on Thursday expressed displeasure, alleging that President Tinubu’s government was concentrating federal resources and developmental projects only in the southern part of the country.
In a swift response, the presidency, through Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Sunday Dare, dismissed Kwankwaso’s allegations.
The presidential spokesman reeled out a list of key infrastructural and policy-driven interventions being executed in the northern region to debunk the claims.
Dare maintained that Tinubu remains a national leader committed to equitable development across all zones of the country.
He Knows What He’s Doing – Ayekooto
Reacting further, Akindele insisted that Kwankwaso’s remarks were not accidental.
According to him, the NNPP chieftain deliberately provoked the presidency to spotlight Tinubu’s work in the North.
“Kwankwaso doesn’t want to personally market Tinubu so that no one says he’s defending his friend,” Akindele claimed.
He added, “The leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement deliberately issued a wrong statement of partial regional development against Tinubu, knowing well that the President’s team would come up with a comprehensive detail of Tinubu’s developmental strides in the North.”
The APC stalwart noted that Kwankwaso’s comments have now prompted the presidency and relevant agencies to highlight projects that were previously under-reported.
“Kwankwaso has succeeded in doing this because the concealed achievements initially muted by those who are supposed to echo them are now being released in droves by those officially saddled with the responsibility,” Akindele said.
He also pointed out that the scale of development in the North under Tinubu’s administration may surprise many Nigerians.
“Who would have thought that more than 52 per cent of the ongoing infrastructural development under Tinubu is concentrated in the North? The majority thought that only 80 per cent of our security budget is spent in the North alone, not knowing that even 52 per cent of infrastructure funds are also going to this strategic part of our nation,” he added.
Naijaonpoint reports that Akindele’s remarks come amid renewed political discourse over the balance of development across Nigeria’s regions, with the North-South divide once again becoming a major talking point in national conversations.