Nigeria’s presidency has rarely been won by arithmetic alone. It is usually won through coalitions of regional alliances, elite bargains, religious networks, party structures and the ability to translate those relationships into votes, whether by rigging or by “A ƙasa, a raka, a tsare, a jira” meaning, cast, escort, protect, and wait. Tinubu’s 2023 victory was a particularly important example of the former.
His ascent to the presidency was not simply the triumph of a southern political machine. It depended substantially on a coalition that reached deep into northern Nigeria. Northern governors helped shape the APC’s decision to nominate a southern candidate. Influential northern politicians mobilized for him. Muslim clerics campaigned on his behalf. The fragmentation of the northern vote among Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Rabiu Kwankwaso also helped produce the electoral arithmetic that carried him to Aso Rock.
Three years later, that coalition is under visible strain. The question is not whether every northerner has turned against Tinubu. That would be neither empirically defensible nor politically useful. The more consequential question is whether the northern political bargain that helped make the Tinubu presidency possible is beginning to unravel.
The political significance of northern Nigeria to Tinubu’s emergence begins before the presidential election itself. In 2022, the APC faced a fundamental strategic question: after eight years of Muhammadu Buhari, should the presidency remain in the North or return to the South? Northern APC governors became central to that debate.
Governors El-Rufai of Kaduna, Ganduje of Kano and Masari of Katsina publicly argued that power should return to the South. El-Rufai explained the position explicitly that after Buhari’s northern presidency, it was, in his words, a matter of “unity, fairness and justice” that power should move south. He and others subsequently campaigned for Tinubu among northern constituencies, including northern Christian groups.
Ganduje went further during the campaign, declaring that the 19 northern states were committed to delivering victory for Tinubu. The subsequent electoral record, however, reveals an important distinction. The North did not vote as a bloc.
Tinubu won substantial northern support, including in Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kwara, Niger and Zamfara, but Atiku carried several northern states, while Kwankwaso spoilt Kano, which essentially made Tinubu’s victory.
The coalition was not exclusively gubernatorial. Tinubu’s decision to run a Muslim-Muslim ticket with Shettima generated intense controversy, particularly in Christian circles. Yet influential Muslim clerics and organizations in the North supported the ticket. The significance of these interventions was not simply the number of votes they could deliver directly. In a political system where traditional institutions, religious authorities, governors and local political brokers retain substantial influence, these actors help establish the legitimacy of a candidate within communities.
The problem for an incumbent is that alliances built around an election must eventually survive the experience of government. That is where the Tinubu coalition is being tested.
The first and most obvious issue is insecurity. Analysts continue to identify banditry and kidnapping in the Northwest and insurgency in the Northeast among Nigeria’s major security challenges. The humanitarian consequences are becoming increasingly severe.
The World Food Programme warned in July 2026 that conflict was driving hunger in parts of northern Nigeria to levels not seen at any time. The FAO subsequently reported that approximately 36.3 million Nigerians were estimated to be facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse during the June to August 2026 lean season, with violence particularly affecting the Northeast, North-Central and Northwest.
This is where security becomes political economy. For a farmer, insecurity means lost access to land. For a trader, it means disrupted markets. For a household, it means higher food prices. For a displaced family, it means the destruction of livelihoods. The northern security crisis is therefore simultaneously a security crisis, an agricultural crisis and a poverty crisis.
Tinubu’s economic reforms complicate the picture further. Of course, the government says the reforms have improved some macroeconomic indicators. But macroeconomic stabilization has not yet translated into household welfare.
The IMF estimated that poverty had reached 63 percent at the national poverty line and that 27 million Nigerians experienced food insecurity in late 2025. The World Bank likewise says poverty remains widespread and that household incomes have yet to recover fully.
This produces an important political paradox. The government can be correct that the economy is becoming more stable while citizens can simultaneously be correct that their lives remain painfully difficult.
A family does not experience fiscal consolidation. It experiences the price of food. A farmer does not experience exchange-rate reform. He experiences whether he can safely reach his farm. An unemployed graduate does not experience improved reserves. He experiences whether he can find work.
Thus, that gap between macroeconomic indicators and lived economic experience is one of the most important vulnerabilities in the government’s political narrative.
A second source of northern discontent concerns appointments. Northern critics have repeatedly argued that important federal appointments under Tinubu have disproportionately favoured the Southwest and the president’s Yoruba constituency.
The Northern Elders Forum made precisely this allegation in 2025, arguing that the distribution of appointments undermined the constitutional principle of federal character. In politics, perception can become a political fact even when the underlying allegation may remain contested.
The most sensitive issue concerns the perception of unequal treatment in the fight against corruption. It is not enough to allege that Tinubu protects Yoruba politicians or persecutes northerners.
But there is a genuine political argument to examine: whether the administration applies the same standard of accountability to politically connected figures regardless of region, party and personal relationship with the presidency.
This brings us to the heart of the matter. Political coalitions survive through reciprocity.
The northern political establishment did not support Tinubu in 2023 merely as an act of charity. It expected political access, representation, security, infrastructure, economic opportunity and a government responsive to northern interests in return.
Can Tinubu’s supporters point to major northern projects and progress in security? Is the North breaking with Tinubu? The answer, at present, is more of “yes” that “no.” The evidence is clearer and therefore very interesting.
Some northern elites have not ceased to support Tinubu as a political proposition. These people still remain powerful but they themselves face backlash and rejection by the masses to the point of mob action.
The assumptions underlying the 2023 alliance have changed. In 2023, northern political elites could sell Tinubu as the southern candidate whose election would restore regional balance after Buhari. In 2026, those same constituencies must evaluate an incumbent. The question has therefore changed from “Who should succeed Buhari?” to “What has this government delivered for us?” That is a much more difficult question.
The answer will be determined not by social-media slogans or elite declarations but by the things that matter electorally for the region, and they are security, food prices, household incomes, jobs, infrastructure, appointments, political representation and the credibility of the opposition.
The emerging “Tinubu Must Go” movement is significant because it attempts to turn these disparate grievances into a single political narrative. The underlying political development is already clear. The northern alliance that helped make Tinubu president can no longer be assumed to be permanent. And this is the most important political question facing the Tinubu presidency as Nigeria moves toward 2027.
