The Cemetery of Broken Promises: Digging the Graves of Tinubu’s Political Betrayals – By Mohammed Bello Doka

The Special Adviser to the President on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, once made a startling revelation during an interview on TVC News. He stated that “90 to 97% of those around Mr. President today had previously worked against him, including myself”. In a subsequent interview on Arise Television’s Morning Show on December 4, 2025, he put the figure at “more than 70 per cent”. Either way, the admission is damning. Any political leader who can abandon 90 to 97 percent of the people who worked tirelessly to ensure he got to power is not just a politician—he is legendary in the art of betrayal. Bwala himself once challenged the legitimacy of Tinubu’s victory, describing him as a “president-select” rather than a “president-elect”. Today, he sits comfortably in the Villa as the President’s spokesman. That is the Tinubu way: reward your enemies, abandon your friends.

Last week, in my weekly Sarcastic Sunday column titled “Yari Should Worry About Tinubu’s Unique Ability to Betray, Not Atiku’s Facts and Fallacies”, I warned Senator Abdulaziz Yari about walking into a trap. On August 29, 2026, Yari—freshly minted as Director-General of Tinubu’s 2027 Presidential Campaign Council—publicly accused Atiku Abubakar of lying to Nigerians. I cautioned him that the similarities between his situation and that of Nasir El-Rufai are not merely coincidental but practically scripted by the same playwright. As usual, I received numerous comments, critiques, and counter-arguments. I acknowledge everyone’s right to their opinion. But one claim cannot go unanswered: the assertion that Tinubu has never betrayed anyone.

This is a response to those summations and an exposé of what led me to the conclusion that anyone who wants to dine with Tinubu needs to know exactly what he or she is getting into. The evidence is overwhelming, factual, and verifiable.

Let us begin with El-Rufai. He was a prominent northern backer of Tinubu’s 2023 run and of the Muslim-Muslim ticket. After Tinubu’s inauguration on May 29, 2023, El-Rufai was nominated as a minister. In August 2023, the Senate withheld confirmation, citing a DSS security report that was never fully published. El-Rufai then withdrew. He later said Tinubu had publicly begged him to join the government, that he had been offered the Power portfolio, and that the president “did not want him in his cabinet.” He accused the administration of incompetence, nepotism, and abandoning APC founding ideals, left the APC for the SDP, and became one of Tinubu’s sharpest critics. He was used to deliver northern legitimacy, then publicly dropped without a visible fight from the Villa.

Then there is Rauf Aregbesola, among Tinubu’s closest Lagos lieutenants and former Osun governor. Elder politicians have recalled Tinubu saying he would trust Aregbesola even with a knife while he slept. The break came in 2018 when Tinubu backed his relative Gboyega Oyetola as Aregbesola’s successor. Aregbesola later said he had been promised that Oyetola would protect his legacy and that “the leader” did not intervene when that failed. On February 14, 2022, in Ijebu-Jesa, he publicly attacked that arrangement. His Omoluabi group did not back Oyetola in the 2022 Osun election; PDP’s Ademola Adeleke won. Aregbesola was gradually sidelined in Lagos and Osun structures and has called the “Renewed Hope” slogan a scam.

Consider Abdullahi Ganduje, one of the northern governors who backed Tinubu in 2023. He became APC National Chairman in August 2023. On June 27, 2025, he resigned, citing health concerns. But multiple reports confirmed he was pushed out—a deliberate gesture to smooth the path for the return of Rabiu Kwankwaso. Ganduje was publicly sacrificed to accommodate a political rival who, in the end, never even defected to the APC. The sacrifice was politically pointless, but Ganduje was discarded anyway.

Consider Tanko Al-Makura, who led a faction of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change to pledge loyalty to Tinubu ahead of 2027. Despite delivering this vital bloc, he was snubbed for a ministerial appointment in 2023. His political capital is now eroding fast, and his faction feels betrayed and sidelined under Tinubu’s ACN-dominated leadership. Consider Nuhu Ribadu, appointed National Security Adviser and once one of the most powerful figures in the administration. By May 2026, reports indicated he had been quietly sidelined, effectively replaced by the appointment of a new Special Adviser on Homeland Security.

Consider the 2026 campaign council row. In August 2026, an APC presidential campaign council list of about 223 names was released, then recalled after uproar. People who worked tirelessly in 2023 and were missing or marginalised on the first draft included Festus Keyamo, Simon Lalong (the 2023 Director-General), Nuhu Ribadu, Yahaya Bello, Benjamin Kalu, Monday Okpebholo, Gbenga Daniel, Ibikunle Amosun, and Osagie Ize-Iyamu. Josef Onoh, the 2023 South-East campaign spokesman, wrote to Tinubu that the list showed “tribalism, personal interests and extreme selfishness” and froze out South-East foundational loyalists. This is not a classic personal betrayal story; it is the same complaint in institutional form—we delivered 2023, the new list treats us as disposable.

But perhaps the most egregious betrayal is the treatment of the support groups that formed the grassroots engine of Tinubu’s 2023 victory. In August 2022, Hon. James Faleke announced on behalf of the Tinubu Support Group that over 5,000 support groups had resolved to merge into an organisation named the Tinubu/Shettima Independent Campaign Group (TSICG). These groups came together at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, on January 11, 2022, to endorse Tinubu’s presidential bid. Prominent among them were the Tinubu Media Team, formed in 2019; the Tinubu Support Group (TSG), formed in 2020; the Tinubu Support Organisation (TSO); and GOGAN (Good Governance Ambassadors of Nigeria). GOGAN had been in existence since the days of President Buhari and was so financially capable that its National Chairman, Chief Felix C. Idiga, donated two private jets to the Tinubu Support Organization to enhance the actualisation of Tinubu’s political ambition. There was also AROMA and countless other groups that crisscrossed the nation, chartering airplanes, distributing campaign paraphernalia, and mobilising voters at tremendous personal cost.

Today, all those groups have been totally sidelined—with the exception of TSG and Southwest Agenda, for reasons I will discuss in another article if the need arises. In February 2026, crisis brewed in the Tinubu Support Organisation as its National Directorate of Concern TSO Pressure Groups accused the Director-General, Aminu Suleiman, of operating a “one-man show” marked by “greed”, “exclusion”, and “personal ambition”. The group stated: “The TSO is a coalition of 6,320 support groups that the organization rode on and won the 2023 elections but were all used and dumped by Aminu Suleiman”. It also alleged that Sulaiman succeeded in sidelining individuals who invested heavily in the success of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the 2023 elections. Another group, the Tinubu Shettima Ambassadors (TSA), which had a presence in all 774 local government areas, publicly expressed concern in April 2025 that “despite our unwavering loyalty and efforts, our group is yet to be integrated into the governance framework.”

These groups have now been completely replaced by the City Boy Movement, headed by Seyi Tinubu, the President’s son. The City Boy Movement, a youth-focused political support group, is rapidly expanding into one of Nigeria’s most organised youth mobilisation platforms, with structures reaching all 36 states and the FCT. An Arewa leader in the South, Alhaji Musa Saidu, has said that the City Boys movement is allegedly displacing the APC in the states because they are getting the funds while the parties are struggling financially. This is the height of political betrayal. Men and women who spent their personal fortunes, chartered airplanes, and risked their political careers to deliver Tinubu’s victory have been discarded like empty water sachets, replaced by a movement built around the President’s son.

So anyone trying to defend Tinubu on the issue of betrayal, abandoned promises, or use-and-dump politics is in for a rude shock. The record is clear. It is documented. It is verifiable. From El-Rufai to Aregbesola, from Ganduje to Ribadu, from Lalong to Keyamo, from the 6,320 groups of the TSO to the countless grassroots mobilisers who emptied their pockets for Tinubu’s dream—all have one thing in common: they were used, and they were dumped.

When the time comes, those who still defend this man will not only find themselves in that cemetery. They will be buried in it. And no amount of press releases or TV appearances will dig them out.

Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com

Abuja Network News