The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and top officials of the federal government to stop staging early campaigns for the President’s re-election bid and focus on tackling the avalanche of challenges bedeviling the country including hunger and terrorism.

This was contained in a  statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Professor Tukur Muhammad-Baba to felicitate with the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria on the occasion of Eid-el-Kabir celebrations.

The ACF expressed worry over the escalating insecurity, high cost of living, crises in the energy, health and education sectors, weak Nigerian currency and high food prices among other challenges.

The Forum flayed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for prioritising what it termed early campaign for Tinubu’s re-election instead of nipping in the bud the several challenges confronting the country.

Recall that various stakeholders of the APC had during the party’s national summit recently held at the President Villa in Abuja, endorsed and adopted Tinubu as the party’s sole presidential candidate for the 2027 poll.

All the 22 governors who are members of the APC, all its members in both chambers of the National  Assembly – House of Representatives and the Senate – and the National Working Committee (NWC) led by the national chairman, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, endorsed the president for re-election during the event.

But the ACF said, “As we observed a year ago, the existential challenges above are symptomatic of a fundamental malaise in the political economy, calling for urgent public policy attention.

“Disappointingly, it would seem to be the case that the ruling party at the centre is more obsessed with unprecedented early campaigns, defections to it, and other manoeuvres for re-election in 2027, amidst putative celebrations of mid-term policy successes.”