By Anule Emmanuel
President Bola Tinubu’s administration is intensifying its campaign to project itself as a champion of northern Nigeria’s development—and the nation as a whole—in a calculated bid to quash a pernicious, unfounded narrative.
This is necessary to halt and shut the window of opportunity for the opposition to distort President Tinubu’s outstanding record as the nation gears up for the 2027 general elections.
Politics, especially on the African continent, often involves portraying opponents negatively as a tactic to gain an advantage at the polls. Unfortunately, politicians do not bother whether this approach fuels division and undermines constructive debate.
President Tinubu’s government cannot hide from criticism but is ready to defend its policies before Nigerians.
In July 2025, the chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum’s Board of Trustees, Bashir Dalhatu, accused President Tinubu’s administration of neglecting northern Nigeria despite the region providing over 64% of his 2023 election votes.
Bashir is not alone. Critics, including former leader of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso, have at some point accused President Tinubu’s government of a lopsided distribution of the commonwealth in Nigeria, with claims that the administration favors the South.
Kwankwaso, during a stakeholders’ dialogue on the 2025 constitutional amendment in Kano, warned that national resources are increasingly tilted toward the southern region, resulting in deepening poverty and insecurity across the North.
But in a swift response to Kwankwaso and similar claims of neglect, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, challenged the assertions.
“The claim that northern Nigeria has been left behind is incorrect. The Tinubu administration has initiated and continued several landmark projects in the North, covering roads, agriculture, healthcare, and energy,” Dare said.
At the time, Dare outlined major infrastructure, health, energy, and agricultural projects being implemented across northern states to buttress the government’s commitment.
Only recently, the President’s media team toured Federal projects in some northern states, again insisting that dozens of major federal projects have been delivered and are underway across the northwest—and that accusations of neglect of the region were politically motivated.
The Renewed Hope Ambassadors (RHA), a grassroots initiative network aligned with the President, said the recent media tour of projects in Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa, and Kebbi was intended to show the scale of work being done in the region. The team declared that the northwest accounted for 48 special intervention projects out of 260 nationwide under the works ministry, spanning roads, rail, and irrigation.
The messaging of the Renewed Hope team remains politically significant. By foregrounding highways, rail links, and agricultural schemes in the northwest, the President’s handlers see the magnitude of infrastructure delivery in the North as evidence of inclusion.
Among the most prominent projects is the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano highway, where the administration says sections are nearing completion after years of delay. In Kaduna, the long-stalled western bypass is said to be about half finished, while work on the Kaduna-Kano-Katsina-Maradi rail corridor is being described as a strategic link for cross-border trade with Niger Republic.
The northwest has also been presented by the presidential team as a beneficiary of smaller but politically useful interventions: irrigation works in Kano, solar projects, agricultural incubators, and erosion-control schemes, alongside upgrades to health facilities and road networks.
In Kebbi, the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway is being advanced in phases, while the Jigawa rail segment is described as close to completion.
The campaign around these projects reflects a broader argument at the heart of President Tinubu’s presidency: that painful fiscal reforms, including the removal of fuel subsidies and changes to revenue sharing, are beginning to translate into higher federal allocations for the states.
The Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG) confirmed in February that between March 2024 and August 2025 alone, the federal government disbursed N2.45 trillion in monthly intervention funds from non-oil savings for infrastructure and security projects at the sub-national level. TMSG Chairman Emeka Nwankpa and Secretary Dapo Okubanjo, said in a statement that the disbursement of N2.45 trillion over the last 17 straight months for infrastructure and security projects reflects equitable allocation of funds. Available records indicate that Federal allocations to States have continued to increase.
Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani has become one of the administration’s key examples, with the presidential team highlighting roads, a skills centre, and a 300-bed specialist hospital as evidence that federal funds are flowing into the state.
Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, argued at a banquet during the tour in Kaduna that the scale of works reflected deliberate policy rather than coincidence. The implication is clear: the administration believes that the current temporary economic pains resulting from bold reforms are a necessary prelude to the country’s physical transformation.
While countering misinformation and lack of awareness about government projects in infrastructure, the economy, and other sectors through the media, Nigerians can now see for themselves the quantum of interventionist projects being delivered by President Tinubu and his government across the 36 states, with the North taking its huge share.
It would seem that the North, ahead of 2027, is being used as both proof point and battleground: proof that the government is spending, and battleground over who gets to define what development really looks like. For President Tinubu and his team, the North remains central to the government’s national agenda.
