November 2, (THEWILL) – As President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election campaign gathers momentum, the All Progressives Congress may need to confront one deceptively simple question: Who is speaking for Mr President?
This is not about who occupies a communication office. It is not about who issues statements. Not even about who regularly appears on television. The real question is: who can walk into a hostile studio, confront the hardest questions about this administration, absorb the punches, dismantle an opponent’s argument and leave undecided Nigerians seeing Bola Tinubu differently?
No doubt, the APC has several experienced communicators. But presidential campaigns are not debating societies. They are contests of perception, persuasion, courage and speed. And somewhere within the present campaign arrangement sits perhaps one of the party’s most battle-tested political communicators: Festus Keyamo, SAN.
Curiously, he is heading Air Mobilisation, and there is logic to it. He is Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, and a nationwide presidential campaign certainly requires aviation logistics. But political campaigns should deploy people according to their greatest competitive advantage, not merely according to the ministries they supervise.
Many competent people can coordinate aircraft and campaign movements. But how many can do what Festus Keyamo does before a television camera? Let’s have a peek into history to answer that question.
In 2018, Muhammadu Buhari appointed Keyamo Director of Strategic Communications and official spokesperson for his 2019 re-election campaign. When Bola Tinubu entered the ferocious 2023 presidential contest, Keyamo was again summoned, this time as Director of Public Affairs and spokesman of the Tinubu-Shettima campaign.
Those appointments were not accidental. Keyamo became one of Tinubu’s most visible political combatants. When the candidate was attacked, he responded. When difficult questions arose about Tinubu’s health, politics, record or controversial Muslim-Muslim ticket, Keyamo entered the arena.
He was not always gentle. He was not universally liked. But that was hardly the assignment. His job was to fight politically and intellectually for his candidate, and few doubted his appetite for the contest. That is Keyamo’s peculiar advantage. Some politicians explain. Some defend. Keyamo fights.
His courtroom background is evident in his political communication. He listens for the weakness in a question, challenges its premise, marshals his facts and counterattacks. Put him before an unfriendly interviewer and he rarely looks like a man desperate for the interview to end. You may disagree with him. You may sometimes find him combative. But ignoring him is considerably more difficult. And in political communication, commanding attention is half the battle.
This makes his present deployment intriguing. Keyamo was conspicuously missing from the initial campaign arrangement before subsequently emerging in the revised structure and eventually being assigned to lead Air Mobilisation. Perhaps there are perfectly sound political reasons for that decision.
APC should still ask itself a brutally practical question: is Air Mobilisation really the highest and best use of Festus Keyamo in this election? It feels somewhat like discovering that your most dangerous striker can also keep goal, and putting him between the posts for the final.
More importantly, the Keyamo of today potentially has something the Keyamo of 2023 did not have: a government record of his own. As Aviation Minister, he has participated directly in the Tinubu administration and can point to reforms, including Nigeria’s significant improvement in Cape Town Convention compliance and consequential progress in aircraft financing and leasing. He now understands Tinubu’s government not merely as a campaign spokesman but from inside the Federal Executive Council. That makes him potentially more formidable in 2027 than he was in 2023.
This campaign will need formidable advocates. President Tinubu is no longer the challenger promising reform. He is now the incumbent who must defend its consequences. Nigerians will ask fatal questions about food prices, inflation, the naira, jobs, insecurity and whether the sacrifices demanded by economic reforms have been worth it. Logical and compelling answers would be required. The opposition will weaponise every hardship.
The President therefore needs communicators who can acknowledge pain without surrendering the argument; explain difficult reforms without sounding insensitive; convert economic statistics into human language; and enter hostile media territory without intimidation.
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Daniel Bwala is articulate and combative, but he carries an unavoidable political vulnerability: in 2023, he was a spokesperson for Atiku Abubakar’s campaign against Tinubu. His political realignment is legitimate, but elections are unforgiving repositories of yesterday’s words. The opposition will inevitably replay them.
Keyamo carries a different history. When Tinubu needed defending before victory was certain, Keyamo was already in the trenches. This is not an argument to displace anyone. It is an argument against leaving proven firepower in reserve.
Even if it is the President’s choice to call him Director of Air Mobilisation, tites are secondary, just give Festus Keyamo the microphone, the burden of selling the President expeditiously becomes lighter.
The clarion call is to put Keyamo on television right away. Send him to the difficult interviews. Let him confront the opposition. Let him explain the reforms. Let him defend the record. Let him do what two presidential campaigns have already established that he knows how to do. The election is just nine weeks away.
President Tinubu saw Keyamo at work in 2023. He knows what he brings when the political temperature rises. Air Mobilisation is important. There are aircraft to move and campaign schedules to coordinate. But there is also a President to sell.
Before the real communication battle begins, APC should be careful not to leave one of its most experienced warriors away from the front. Mr President has used this political weapon before. He may soon discover that he needs it again.
