KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, SENATOR HOPE UZODINMA, CON, GSGI, GOVERNOR OF IMO STATE; SECRETARY, APC PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN COUNCIL; CHAIRMAN, PROGRESSIVE GOVERNORS’ FORUM; AND DIRECTOR-GENERAL, RENEWED HOPE AMBASSADORS

PROTOCOL

Your Excellency, Mr President, this is formally the inauguration of your Presidential Campaign Council, but anyone who looks around this hall will see that it has become a good deal more than that. Every progressive governor is here. Our elected members of the National Assembly are here. So are the chairmen and executives of our party from the national level through the states to the local governments, together with the elected chairmen of our councils. When the elected leadership of one party, drawn from every tier of the federation, gathers in a single room, we can fairly describe it as a general assembly of the federation.

They have come for two reasons. They have come to witness the take-off of this campaign, and they have come to tell you, in person and with one voice, that they stand with you and are committed to your re-election.

The make-up of this gathering also speaks volumes about the political reality of our country. Under your leadership, our party holds the Federal Government and enjoys resounding majorities in both chambers of the National Assembly. Thirty-one of the thirty-six states of the federation are governed by the APC, which is 86 per cent of the states. And of the 774 local government councils in the country, about 685 are led by chairmen elected on the platform of our party. In other words, Your Excellency, the Nigerian people have entrusted every tier of their federation to one party, and that party is ours. I believe this is the strongest position any party has occupied in the Fourth Republic, and it did not come about by accident. It came about because Nigerians have watched what this party is doing with power, and a great many of them, including many who once stood against us, have concluded that it is the right course for the country.

We have also come to tell you that we are proud of what you have done with the mandate Nigerians gave you in 2023, and I would like to take a few minutes to say why.

The first thing we are proud of is the courage you brought to the problems you inherited. When you took office, the country was spending more on petrol subsidy than on many of its most important public services combined, and a system of multiple exchange rates was quietly rewarding a few people at the expense of everyone else. Every Nigerian leader before you knew these arrangements could not last. You were the one who chose to end them, on the first day of your administration and in the full knowledge that it would cost you popularity. You followed that with a reform of our tax laws, which came into force in January this year and was designed so that low-income earners and small businesses carry less of the burden while the system as a whole becomes simpler and fairer. These were the kinds of decisions governments put off from one election to the next. You took them early, and the country is beginning to reap the benefits.

The second thing we are proud of is that the results have begun to show. In the second quarter of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics recorded 4.43 per cent growth, up from 4.23 per cent a year earlier. Headline inflation eased to 15.39 per cent, according to the most recent figures, for August. In May, S&P raised Nigeria’s sovereign credit rating for the first time since 2012. And only last week, the World Bank projected that our economy will grow by an average of 4.4 per cent a year through 2028, with inflation and poverty expected to fall further if these reforms are sustained. Nobody here pretends that the work is finished, or that Nigerians have not felt the strain of the journey. But the institutions that measure economies for a living are now saying what we have been saying for some time, which is that Nigeria is on the right course.

The third thing we are proud of, and the one that matters most to the people we represent, is that the benefits are now reaching ordinary Nigerians. The resources once lost to the subsidy arrangement now flow to the three tiers of government represented in this hall, and many of our states and councils can do far more today than they could three years ago. Through the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, more than one and a half million students have received support, with over N350 billion disbursed to cover their fees and upkeep. The Consumer Credit Scheme has given working Nigerians access to credit that was once available only to a privileged few. The Renewed Hope Conditional Cash Transfer was designed to reach 15 million of our poorest households directly. The first phase of the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway is now open to traffic, and work continues on major roads across every geopolitical zone. And through the Renewed Hope Ward Development Programme, your administration is taking development into all 8,809 wards of the federation, with the aim of bringing 10 million Nigerians into productive activity. All of these are already happening, and members of this historic gathering have seen its effects in the states and councils they lead.

That is why we believe the case for a second term is a strong one. Reforms of this scale take time to mature. What has been done in these three years is the hard and largely unseen work of laying a foundation, and anyone who has ever built anything knows that the foundation is the most expensive part of the work and the part people see least. The question Nigerians will answer in January is whether we build on that foundation or abandon it and begin all over again, and if we begin again, it is the Nigerian people who will bear the cost. We intend to put that choice before them plainly, and we are confident about the answer they will give.

Having said all that, Mr President, we would like to request this of you:

An election season has a way of consuming everything around it, and there will be no shortage of people who would like to see you spend the next three months responding to every distraction on the campaign trail. We would ask that you do not allow it to distract you from governance. The reforms you began need your full attention if they are to deliver everything they promise, and Nigerians will be better served by a President who keeps his hand firmly on the work of government than by one who is pulled away from it by the demands of electioneering. Please, Your Excellency, leave the heavy lifting of this campaign to us.

We say this with confidence because every campaign is, at heart, local, and at every level of this federation the APC has the people to carry it. This Council will set the direction, agree the message and coordinate the effort nationally. The governors will lead the campaign in their states. The council chairmen will carry it into the local governments and the wards. Our legislators will carry it into their senatorial districts and constituencies, and our party executives and the Renewed Hope Ambassadors will work through every structure we have, down to the polling unit. It is our duty to take the message of Renewed Hope into every part of the country, to explain what has been done, and to support that explanation with facts the people can verify for themselves. There is a saying among our people that a good product sells itself. You have given Nigerians a good record. Our responsibility is to make sure it reaches every corner of the country, and that no Nigerian first hears about your record from those who would rather misrepresent it.

Your Excellency, inside this room are elected representatives of the people of Nigeria at all tiers of government, federal, state and local, up to the wards; including elected party executives. These are the same people who will carry the campaign down to the polling units. They are already energised for the work, and I know they will deliver. So the foot soldiers are willing and able to stand in as the fervent apostles of your campaign.

This responsibility falls on us for another reason. Because our party holds every tier of government, Nigerians will not judge the Presidency in isolation. The verdict they return in January will be shaped, to a very great extent, by what they have seen of their governors, their council chairmen and their legislators over these past three years. Mr President will be on the ballot on 16 January 2027, but if we are honest with ourselves, so will we. This election is as much a referendum on every APC official present here as it is on the Presidency, and I include myself in that without reservation.

It follows that our party has no excuse not to win. Victory is guaranteed when we are united, committed and work as a focused team. So we must jettison any misgivings we have against each other.

We must reconcile any differences we may have and rally as one family behind the party and all our candidates. We must speak to Nigerians as one family with one voice and one message.

The Nigerian people have given us every advantage a political party could reasonably ask for, and Mr President has made our task easier still by giving us a record we can defend with pride. Having received that much, none of us can afterwards turn round and say the conditions were against us.

So, to my brother governors, I know that many of you have been carrying this message in your states for months, and I am simply asking that we carry it with greater urgency from today, treating each of the ninety-four days ahead of us as a working day. To our colleagues, the council chairmen, you are closer to the people than any of us, and much of what happens in January will rest on the work you do in the wards. To our distinguished legislators and our party executives at every level, the people you represent will look to you to explain what this administration has done on their behalf. And to our candidates, permit me one appeal. The primaries are behind us. Whatever disagreements they may have left, the success of any one of us cannot be built on the failure of another, and every candidate who carries our flag deserves the full support of the whole party. Our unity should be unassailable.

If I may reduce all of this to a single prayer, it is that every one of us should go home and deliver our polling units and our wards.

Permit me also to sound a word of caution, which I offer to myself as much as to anyone. A party that controls every tier of government can easily grow comfortable and begin to mistake the size of its structure for the depth of its support. But as critical as structures are, it is citizens who vote, and each one of them has to be persuaded. Our strength in numbers also places a greater obligation on us to campaign peacefully and within the law, because the conduct of the governing party sets the tone for the whole election.

As Secretary of this great Presidential Campaign Council, I know that the campaign will be directed from here. But it will be won in our states, in our councils and in our wards, and that work belongs to every one of us here. Whenever you choose to speak to Nigerians yourself in the weeks ahead, Mr President, we intend that you will find the ground already prepared.

Your Excellency, Nigerians asked us to govern at every level, and we accepted. In January, they will ask what we did with the opportunity, and I am confident that, with the record you have given us and the work we are committed to doing between now and then, we will give them an answer that makes them proud of the trust they placed in us.

Your Excellency, it is therefore my privilege, on behalf of the progressive governors, the members of the National Assembly, the chairmen and executives of our party, the elected chairmen of our councils, the Renewed Hope Ambassadors and every APC official gathered here, to move a motion for a vote of implicit confidence in your leadership and in the performance of your administration, and to commit without reservation to the Tinubu–Shettima ticket for a second term.

I SO MOVE....

Thank you, and God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

***Senator Hope Uzodimma, CON, GSGI

Governor of Imo State

Chairman, Progressive Governors Forum and Secretary, Presidential Campaign Council**

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