2027: No candidate better positioned than Tinubu — Shoga

ABUJA — THE Director-General of the City Boy Movement (CBM), Francis Shoga, on Thursday declared that no candidate is better positioned to drive Nigeria’s development beyond 2027.

Shoga pointed to what he described as significant progress in infrastructure, agriculture, energy and broader economic reforms as evidence of the administration’s record.

Speaking during an interactive session with journalists at the headquarters of the movement in Abuja, Shoga said the scale of projects and reforms undertaken by the Tinubu administration demonstrated that the President deserved the opportunity to consolidate them.

The CBM chief, whose organisation is mobilising support for Tinubu’s 2027 presidential bid, urged Nigerians to assess the administration based on measurable interventions in critical sectors rather than political rhetoric.

He cited the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway and the 1,068-kilometre Sokoto–Badagry Superhighway as evidence of what he described as an unprecedented infrastructure drive under the administration.

He said the government is “constructing the two longest highways in our history,” while also rehabilitating and building numerous federal roads nationwide.

The Federal Ministry of Works said President Tinubu commissioned the first 30 kilometres of the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway on May 31, 2025, as part of the 40.7-kilometre stretch then being delivered under Phase One, Section One. The broader Section One corridor was originally designed to cover about 47.47 kilometres.

The ministry also described the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway as a 1,068-kilometre corridor running from Sokoto through Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo and Ogun states before terminating in Lagos, with construction proceeding in sections.

On agriculture, Shoga said the administration had embarked on mechanisation on what he described as a historic scale, pointing to the deployment of 2,000 tractors and other equipment as well as the $1.1 billion Green Imperative Programme being implemented with Brazil.

“We are mechanising agriculture at a historic scale,” he said.

Tinubu formally launched 2,000 tractors under the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme in June 2025, while Nigeria and Brazil had earlier signed the commercial phase of the $1.1 billion Green Imperative Project to provide machinery, technical support and service centres aimed at raising agricultural productivity.

Shoga also cited the creation of a standalone Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, expansion of cultivated land for rice and wheat and increased financing for agricultural production as evidence that the government was attempting to tackle food insecurity structurally rather than through temporary interventions.

On the petroleum industry, the CBM Director-General said the administration had recorded improvements in crude production and attracted fresh investments into the upstream sector.

He recalled the commencement of commercial operations by the Dangote Refinery as well as the restart of operations at the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries in late 2024.

Official Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission data showed that crude production reached 1.56 million barrels per day in June 2026, before settling at about 1.50 million barrels per day in August, when Nigeria met its OPEC quota for the fourth consecutive month.

Shoga further defended the administration’s response to the hardship arising from the removal of petrol subsidy, pointing to the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative as one of the measures designed to provide cheaper alternatives for transportation.

He said the programme had encouraged the establishment of vehicle conversion centres and attracted substantial private-sector investment into CNG infrastructure.

The Federal Government has continued to expand the CNG programme, including the commissioning in May 2026 of four major CNG infrastructure projects in Lagos, Abuja and Owerri as part of measures to reduce transport costs following the subsidy reform.

Shoga also pointed to the improvement in Nigeria’s external reserves, moderation in inflation and reduction in the debt-service-to-revenue burden as signs that the administration’s economic reforms were beginning to produce results.

Latest Federal Ministry of Finance figures put Nigeria’s external reserves at $54.7 billion as of September 18, 2026, while headline inflation stood at 15.39 per cent in August. The ministry also put the debt-to-revenue ratio at about 65 per cent in the first half of 2026.

He argued that the figures strengthened the case for allowing the administration to deepen the reforms and translate improving macroeconomic indicators into broader gains for Nigerians.

The City Boy Movement has emerged as one of the pro-Tinubu political mobilisation groups preparing for the 2027 election.

At its national retreat in Abuja in July, Shoga said the organisation was targeting 10 million youth votes for the President through grassroots mobilisation across wards, local governments and communities.

For Shoga, the infrastructure, agricultural, energy and fiscal interventions already underway constituted the basis of the movement’s support for Tinubu, insisting that the President remained its choice to continue driving the country’s development agenda.