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| Tompolo Urged Voters in Bauchi State |
In the dusty expanse of Bauchi State’s Games Village on a recent Saturday, a delegation from Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta handed over 32 campaign vehicles to local All Progressives Congress (APC) structures. The gesture was more than logistics for grassroots mobilisation. It was the latest move in an expanding political network led by High Chief Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo—better known as Tompolo—a former Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) commander turned pipeline security contractor and influential political actor.
Through his representative, High Chief Kestin Ebimorbowei Pondi, Managing Director of Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, Tompolo delivered a clear message to voters in Bauchi and the broader North: support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election in 2027. Doing so, he argued, would clear the path for a northern president in 2031. Defeat Tinubu with a southern opposition candidate, and the North could wait until 2035.
The argument rests on Nigeria’s informal but potent tradition of power rotation between North and South. After eight years of Muhammadu Buhari (2015–2023), the South took its turn with Tinubu. Completing that southern cycle with a second term, Tompolo contends, preserves the rotational balance and positions the North for an uncontested claim next.
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“Let’s not allow any opposition to deceive us. Nobody from the South will come to power and stay for four years. If you give the South power, it will delay your time. It is going to take another eight years,” Pondi said on Tompolo’s behalf. “Let’s vote for Tinubu, who has exhausted four years and has only four years to go, so that by 2031, when you choose a candidate in the North, those of us from the South can stand by you and support your candidate.”
He framed continuity as both pragmatic and progressive: “The only way to go is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If we want a progressive Nigeria, we must vote for Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If we want peace, we must vote for Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If we want progress, we must vote for Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
Bauchi APC governorship candidate Mohammed Abubakar welcomed the vehicles as evidence of South-South solidarity with the state’s party structures and urged residents to reciprocate at the polls.
From Creeks to National Campaign Trail
Tompolo’s trajectory explains why his voice carries weight beyond the Niger Delta. Born April 12, 1971, in Okerenkoko, Gbaramatu Kingdom, Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta State, he rose during the region’s turbulent years of resource agitation. A former MEND commander, he accepted the 2009 Presidential Amnesty Programme under Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, helping shift the region from armed struggle toward dialogue and development.
Today he chairs Tantita Security Services, awarded a major pipeline surveillance contract in 2022. The firm is widely credited with helping curb crude oil theft and boosting national production through community-based monitoring that employs tens of thousands of local youths. That economic clout has translated into political leverage. Tompolo has emerged as founder and grand patron of the PBAT Door-to-Door Movement, a grassroots outfit rolling out vehicles, generators, speakers and coordinators across northern states—including Kano (50 vehicles), Borno (44), Taraba, Yobe, Katsina and now Bauchi.
Similar events have featured the same core message: Tinubu’s reforms—fuel subsidy removal, naira float, infrastructure projects such as rail lines and the AKK gas pipeline—require continuity.
Opposition promises of a single term, Tompolo repeatedly warns, are unrealistic; incumbents almost always seek the constitutionally allowed second term.
The Rotation Calculus and Its Critics
Nigeria’s rotational understanding is not constitutional, yet it has shaped elite bargaining for decades. Supporters of the 2031 northern timeline, including Kano Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf at a parallel Tompolo-backed event, argue that allowing the South its full eight years mirrors Buhari’s tenure and strengthens national cohesion. Former Kaduna senator Shehu Sani has echoed the warning: truncating the southern turn risks southern resentment and could end the rotation principle altogether.
Critics counter that rigid zoning can sideline merit, competence and the right of any Nigerian to contest. Opposition figures, including northern aspirants, argue that performance, not geography, should decide 2027. Economic hardship, inflation and insecurity remain potent campaign issues that transcend regional arithmetic. Tinubu’s administration points to increased federal allocations to states, infrastructure delivery and crude production recovery as evidence of progress; opponents highlight the human cost of reforms.
Tompolo’s pitch is strategic on multiple levels. For the North, it offers a deferred but clearer path to power with southern backing. For the South-South, it reinforces alliances with the APC centre and protects interests tied to oil security and federal contracts. For Tinubu’s camp, it supplies an influential non-Yoruba southern voice reaching into northern strongholds where APC needs to consolidate.
Grassroots Machinery and Political Reality
The PBAT Door-to-Door Movement claims an ambitious target of mobilising millions of votes through unit-level engagement. In Bauchi, organisers speak of knocking on “every door.”
Vehicle donations provide tangible tools for that work while signalling resources and seriousness.
Whether the effort translates into votes will depend on local party strength, voter perceptions of governance delivery—roads, healthcare, education, security—and the broader opposition landscape.
Tompolo’s intervention also highlights a broader shift: former Niger Delta agitators moving from confrontation to partnership with the federal government, leveraging security contracts and political networks. Tantita’s model of employing locals to protect assets has been presented as a template for stabilising the oil sector. Its political extension into northern campaign logistics shows how that influence is being nationalised.
As 2027 approaches, the Bauchi event is one data point in a larger mobilisation. Tompolo is not merely endorsing a candidate; he is articulating a multi-year regional bargain. Whether northern voters accept the 2031 horizon, and whether southern support materialises then, remains to be tested at the ballot box. For now, the former creek commander is investing vehicles, rhetoric and networks in the proposition that Tinubu’s second term is the shortest route to northern presidency—and to a more predictable rotation of power.
The conversation Tompolo has amplified is larger than one state’s campaign launch. It is about how Nigeria manages its regional balances, the durability of informal political pacts, and the role of new power brokers who bridge the creeks and the savanna.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Technology.
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