Tinubu, Akintola, El-Rufai: Why the North Cannot Trust Southwest in 2027
By Mohammed Bello Doka
4 June, 2026.
When Nasir El-Rufai stood before the world in June 2022 and declared that 12 out of 14 northern APC governors had agreed to cede presidential power to the South, he was hailed as a statesman, a unifier, a northern leader with the courage to put national interest above regional ambition. He told reporters that day that a super majority of northern governors had taken a decision and that everyone, including the defiant Yahaya Bello, was bound by it . It was a moment of rare political sacrifice from a region that had grown accustomed to holding the reins of power.
Today, as El-Rufai languishes in the detention facilities of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the question that every thinking northerner must ask is this: What did the South do with that sacrifice? The answer is as devastating as it is simple. Silence. Complicity. Continued support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from southern political elites who have paid their media houses, their data boys, and their influencers not only to denigrate El-Rufai but to paint the entire North as a region of power-hungry traitors.
And now, these same southern voices expect the North to trust zoning again in 2027. They expect northerners who can see, who can think, who have not been blinded by tribal sentiment, to once again hand over power to a region that has demonstrated exactly what it thinks of northern loyalty.
Let us rewind to the beginning. Professor Ishaq Akintola, the founder of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has been remarkably candid about his role in this saga. In a press release dated March 23, 2026, Akintola confessed that MURIC was the first to demand a Yoruba Muslim president as far back as February 2021 . He and the Concerned Yoruba Muslim Scholars met and persuaded Tinubu to run. But they quickly realized that Yoruba Muslims alone could not Omo
