The Chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum and the Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodimma has told the Diplomatic Corps to expect more narrative campaigns by opposition parties in the coming months ahead of the 2027 general election.
Uzodimma, who is also the Director-General of The Renewed Hope Ambassadors stated this on Monday in Abuja during the interactive session between the APC governors, ministers and Ambassadors of various countries.
The governor, who highlighted the achievements of the Bola Tinubu administration said the Renewed Hope agenda is not a campaign slogan, but a coherent policy framework, anchored in the foundational reforms extending into infrastructure, social investment, security cooperation, and institutional repair.
He stated: “Reform produces political opposition. That is the nature of democratic systems. When entrenched interests are disrupted, those who were benefiting from the prior arrangement do not retire quietly. They contest. They mount narrative campaigns. They predict failure with a fervour proportional to what they have lost.
“Some of what your governments will read about Nigeria in the coming months will reflect that contestation more than it reflects the underlying data. I would simply ask you to weigh the noise against the verifiable record, and to trust your own attachés’ assessments over what circulates in the more excitable corners of social media.
“The administration is not asking you to take its word. The data is in the public domain. The IMF is doing its work. The World Bank is doing its work. Fitch and Moody’s are doing theirs.”
Uzodimma said that investors are voting with their capital, and they have voted up 55 per cent on the Nigerian stock market in less than five months, saying the government is content to be judged on outcomes.
He noted: “I want to close with what I think is the most useful proposition I can offer this audience.
Your governments and your investors have an opportunity, in the period ahead, to align with that framework in ways that will produce outsized returns.
“Where you are funding development programmes, the structural reforms have made those programmes more durable. Where you are facilitating private investment, the macro stability has made that investment more bankable. Where you are pursuing security cooperation, the political will at the highest level is now consistent with operational delivery.”
Uzodimma emphasised that as the Director-General of RHA and PGF, he made it his work to explain this trajectory wherever he could be heard and ensure that what is being achieved at the federal level is matched by serious delivery at the subnational level.
Uzodimma stated: “A country that has absorbed an external shock of the magnitude caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and continues to grow at four per cent, with external reserves above $48 billion, a stock market that has risen by as much as 55 per cent since January;
“A country that has supported over one million students through interest-free loans, with major infrastructure corridors under active construction across multiple geopolitical zones, with a tax system that has just exempted the bottom of the income distribution entirely, and with a state police framework moving through legislative consolidation, is a country that is not merely surviving its reform period. It is moving through it.
“And what comes out on the other side will be a Nigeria more competent, more competitive, and more credible than the one any of us has known.”
“We are passing through turbulent waters, but very soon, the aircraft will be stable, the weather will be clear and we will not fasten our seatbelts.”