Bashir El-Rufai Says Core North Is "Warming Up" To Atiku, North Yet To Confirm It's Even Cold

So Bashir El-Rufai has stepped forward to announce that core Northerners are gradually warming up to Atiku and the ADC ahead of 2027. Very interesting development, except somebody forgot to ask the actual core North if they knew they were undergoing this warming process in the first place.

This is one of those classic Nigerian political statements where one person speaks with so much confidence about an entire region's feelings that you start wondering if there was a secret meeting, a survey, a WhatsApp poll, anything, or if this is just vibes dressed up as political intelligence. Because "the North is warming up" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a claim with zero attached evidence.

And this isn't even new behaviour. Every election season, somebody appoints themselves official spokesperson for an entire region's mood. One day it's "the South-West is unhappy," another day it's "the South-East has spoken," and now it's "the core North is warming." Nobody ever explains how they arrived at room temperature for 70 million people, they just declare it and move on to the next interview.

Meanwhile, actual core Northerners are probably going about their business, trading, farming, dealing with insecurity, worrying about the price of rice, completely unaware that their political temperature has been publicly announced without their consent. Somebody should really invent a thermometer for these claims.

Of course, Atiku's camp will happily receive this news, because free endorsement talk before you've even started campaigning hard is a gift nobody rejects. Whether it holds up when actual votes are counted is an entirely different gist for another day.

By 2027, we'll find out if the North was actually warming up, or if this was just another political forecast delivered with full confidence and zero weather data. In Nigerian politics, "sources say" and "core so-and-so is warming up" remain two of the most powerful phrases, backed by nothing but delivered like gospel.