According to Solomon Dalung, a former minister of youth and sports, Northerners are not upset with President Bola Tinubu because of the people he appointed to his ministry.

Rather, he claimed that Tinubu’s ideas and programs have caused Nigerians to bear an economic weight, which is why the North is upset with him.

According to reports, Dalung said that by living lavishly at the cost of regular Nigerians, the Tinubu administration had weaponized poverty and offended the feelings of the impoverished.

He claimed that the North’s citizens now distrust President Tinubu because of the current government’s economic policies and disdain for the wellbeing of the populace.

According to Dalung, who was interviewed by Vanguard, Northerners overwhelmingly supported Tinubu in the 2023  election and are not too bothered about his lopsided appointments.

He maintained that Tinubu’s economic policies, which have made Nigerians poorer, are the main source of discontent.

The president even won the election because Northerners favored the political system known as zoning or rotation of power between the North and South. Thus, the president was elected mostly by the more than 5 million Northerners who cast ballots. His economic policies, which I previously listed, have left the poor in poverty. He has also weaponized poverty and insulted their sentiments by living extravagantly and lavishing money on his family and government while the poor remain impoverished. These economic policies are the reason they are unhappy with him.

Thus, these are the elements that are causing mistrust between the Northern populace and President Tinubu. Since 90% of the people he appoints in the North are from the Muslim North, the Muslim North has no reason to oppose him even if it were about appointments.

Instead, it is about his declaration of war against the poor, the inability of all of his appointees to make any difference, and their inability to win back anyone’s trust. That’s the problem, then. “Whether he is from the South or not is not the issue,” Dalung argued.