The camp of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned opposition parties against zoning the 2027 presidential ticket solely to the South, arguing that such a plan could hand President Bola Tinubu an easy path to re-election.
In a statement issued in Abuja by Atiku’s media aide, Olusola Sanni, the former Vice President’s camp maintained that while the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) may retain its southern presidential arrangement around Tinubu, it would be politically risky for the opposition to adopt the same strategy.
According to the statement, electoral success should be driven by political calculations, coalition-building and realism rather than emotions or sentiment.
“The first and most obvious question is this: how does a Southern opposition candidate realistically unseat a sitting Southern president? Nigerian political history offers no precedent for such an outcome.
“No incumbent president has ever been defeated by an opposition challenger from the same geopolitical bloc. To insist otherwise is to enter the contest already defeated,” Sanni said.
The Atiku camp also argued that by 2027, the South would have spent more years in power than the North since the return of democracy in 1999.
“By 2027, the South would have held presidential power for approximately 18 years in the Fourth Republic, compared to about 10 years for the North. If the South retains power for another four years, that disparity widens even further.
“It therefore becomes difficult to understand the justice in an argument that seeks to deepen an already existing imbalance under the guise of equity,” Sanni added.
The statement further accused some political actors of hypocrisy over the zoning debate, especially those who supported former President Goodluck Jonathan’s emergence in 2011 following the death of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
“It is intellectually dishonest for those who enthusiastically supported a Southern presidency under Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, despite the North’s legitimate expectation under the informal zoning arrangement, to now suddenly posture as custodians of rotational justice.
“Principles do not become sacred only when they align with personal ambition.
“The South-East deserves a sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership, not symbolic tokenism or bespoke arrangements tailored to satisfy one individual’s ambition,” it stated.
The Atiku camp urged opposition parties to focus on building a broad national coalition capable of defeating the incumbent administration rather than pursuing what it described as emotional political narratives.
“Defeating an incumbent president requires realism, not romanticism; strategy, not sentiment; honesty, not selective memory. The opposition must decide whether its goal is to make an emotional statement or to actually win power,” the statement added.
