2027: You will lose, if you don’t play politics with Tinubu, APC’s Kalu tells PDP’s Governor Lawal

By KEMI KASUMU and OUR REPORTER, Gusau 

There has been no official reaction of Governor Dauda Lawal to the APC Senator’s comment, which is evidently believed was deliberate to help Matawalle, one of Tinubu’s appointees, strengthen the wooing of opposition governors for the president’s re-election in 2027 that started in Zamfara State recently.

The Senator representing Abia North in the Nigerian Senate and Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ally, Orji Uzor Kalu, on Monday June 16, 2025, publicly told the Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Dauda Lawal, to mend his political differences that is mere being in opposition party with the president in the interest of people of North West of the country.

Kalu, an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, warned that the people of Zamfara could lose out of major development if the governor failed to play political economics with President Tinubu.

The senator spoke when he commissioned the newly constructed Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development and renovated Zamfara College of Arts and Science both in Gusau, the Zamfara capital.

Orji Uzor Kalu, whose visit and comment in Gusau the Zamfara State capital on Monday followed a recent enthusiasm similarly publicly expressed by Tinubu’s Minister of State for Defence Bello Mohammed Matawalle saying Governor Dauda Lawal would soon be welcome to the ruling APC, said he was not advising the governor to dump his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and join the APC but that he should maintain a good relationship with the President who is an APC powerbroker.

Kalu, Abia State Governor from May 1999 to May 2007, said though he was a PDP member at the time, he maintained a good relationship with Tinubu who was of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) at the time.

This global online newspaper reports that when Orji Kalu was Abia State Governor, which he referenced to Governor Lawal as Tinubu of AD at the time, President Olusegun Obasanjo was the President of Nigeria while Tinubu was governor of Lagos State.

The Abia continued that, “The president is not only my brother; he is my friend. People thought we met when we were governors, no. My children used to live in his house. Mrs Tinubu brought those girls up because we were living in Abia but they schooled in Lagos. They lived in Marina, in the president’s house.

“Whatever my political differences with the President were, we have healed it up and we are one. I want you to heal your political differences with the President.

“I know you are PDP. I am APC. The President is APC. Do PDP as a party but do economic development as a Zamfara man so Zamfara can develop.”

Kalu urged Lawal to play political economics to get more Federal Government funds for developmental projects in the state.

The DEFENDER, however, reports that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria forbids or does not give room for a situation where any democratically elected president’s performance or provision of security, safety, welfare and development of all kinds can be impeded by personal, political, religious or ethnic interest consideration.

The senator said, “Once you leave economic diplomacy and play politics, you will lose, Zamfara people will lose. Go and take the federal money. If you do politics, you leave the federal money. If you do political economics, you get the federal money and develop Zamfara State.

“(Former) Governor (Abdul’aziz) Yari is from here and you are from here. You people should come together and give Zamfara (people) the development they need and the livewire they need.

“This place needs the attention of the Federal Government. I am not saying join their party but I am saying be on good terms.

“Tinubu was not in our party when President Obasanjo was in office. I was the governor of the PDP. He was the only one that was not in PDP but we shared the same ideas.”

There has been no official reaction of Governor Dauda Lawal to the APC Senator’s comment, which is evidently believed was deliberate to help Matawalle, one of Tinubu’s appointees, strengthen the wooing of opposition governors for the president’s re-election in 2027 that started in Zamfara State recently.

With the recent defection of Governors Umo Eno (Akwa Ibom) and Sheriff Oborevwori (Delta) from the PDP to the APC, the ruling party boasts of 23 governors out of 36, a development that critics labelled as an agenda to turn Nigeria into a one-party state.

The president has vehemently refuted the claim in his Democracy Day speech on June 12, 2025.