All Progressives Congress National Chairman Professor Nentawe Yilwatda has issued a strong warning against politicians motivated by narrow personal ambitions who he said risked undermining the federal government’s strategic investment programme in northern Nigeria, calling on traditional rulers, political leaders, youth groups, businesses, and civil society across the region to rally behind the implementation of the Tinubu administration’s development agenda.
In a statement issued through his Special Adviser on Media and Information Strategy, Abimbola Tooki, Yilwatda argued that the scale and intentionality of ongoing federal interventions in the North represented a genuine and unprecedented commitment to transforming the region into a hub of productivity, trade, education, and infrastructure-driven growth that would position it as a commercial nerve centre for the entire West African sub-region.
He highlighted the expansion and rehabilitation of major road corridors linking northern states to key commercial hubs, rail modernization projects connecting northern cities to ports and southern markets, strategic energy investments targeting industrial clusters and rural communities, and the development of agricultural value chains through irrigation projects, mechanization support, and agro-processing zones as the pillars of a coordinated national strategy to integrate the North into global value chains and the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Yilwatda underscored the region’s geographic advantage, noting its proximity to Niger Republic, Chad, Cameroon, and Benin Republic, and argued that with sustained political commitment and internal cohesion, the North could become the economic gateway through which Nigeria deepened its relationships with neighbouring economies.
“This is a defining moment for the North and for Nigeria. We must not allow narrow personal interests to truncate a historic opportunity for regional transformation. The future we seek requires collective commitment and unity of purpose,” he said.
He described President Tinubu as a resilient democrat whose political journey had been defined by courage and consistency from the resistance against military rule during the Sani Abacha era to the present, and argued that his plans for northern Nigeria were evidence of inclusive and visionary leadership.
Yilwatda expressed concern about what he described as the opposition’s lack of internal cohesion and credibility, arguing that parties unable to manage their own affairs offered no credible case for national governance.
