2027: Quit if you can’t campaign for us, APC tells Tinubu’s ‘technocrats’

By Omeiza Ajayi The ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has warned political appointees serving in the government of President Bola Tinubu that they cannot hold political positions while claiming to be technocrats detached from partisan responsibilities, insisting that such appointees must be ready to mobilise support for the party or vacate their offices. APC national chairman, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, gave the warning on Wednesday in Abuja when he received members of the Progressive Local Government Chairmen’s Forum, led by the Chairman of Chanchaga Local Government in Niger State, Dr Mustafa Jibrin, who briefed him on the group’s grassroots mobilisation drive ahead of the 2027 general election. Yilwatda said the council chairmen, being closer to the people than officials in Abuja, were better positioned to identify appointees who were failing to deliver politically in their wards, regardless of how well they performed administratively in their offices.

“It is you who will tell me that this commissioner is not working. Maybe he is working in the office, but politically he is zero in his ward. It is you who know whether this director general may be working in the office, but politically he is zero back home,” he said.

Yilwatda said appointees could not distance themselves from politics simply because their titles carried technocratic descriptions, comparing such claims to someone denying their ethnic identity despite carrying its unmistakable markers. “We call them political appointees. You can’t be holding a political position and then say you are not a politician.

I have been hearing some people saying that, ‘I am not a politician,’ but they are holding political appointments. It is like somebody who has Yoruba or Kanuri tribal marks telling you that he is not a Yoruba or Kanuri man. According to him, appointees who wanted to avoid politics altogether should decline political appointments in the first instance, adding that the party’s mobilisation efforts depended on votes rather than office holders who saw themselves purely as administrators.

“If you don’t want to be a politician, don’t take a political appointment. Without the votes, you can’t be in office. That is why we need you to work with the…