Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has given strong reasons why opposition parties in Nigeria should not zone their 2027 presidential ticket to the south ahead of primaries.
According to a statement by his spokesperson, Olusola Sanni, Atiku warned opposition political actors against adopting what he termed as a self-defeating and intellectually dishonest narrative that maintains the 2027 presidential ticket must be reserved solely to the South.
Atiku stated that while zoning in the All Progressives Congress may be to hold on to the presidency around President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it would amount to political childishness for the opposition parties to toe the same line without a careful appraisal of electoral realities.
He said politics must be powered by strategy, coalition-building, and hard electoral arithmetic, rather than emotional statement or selective moral arguments.
“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,” the statement said.
The Atiku camp further argued that the moral argument being advanced in favor of southern zoning collapses under scrutiny.
“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,” the statement added.
Continuing, Atiku pointed accusing fingers at some political actors, who be berated for selective memory and opportunism, especially those who dumpned the zoning arrangement in 2011 , after the demise of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, only to now trump it up as a holy political doctrine.
“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.”
While pointing out that the aspiration of the South Eaast’s aspiration to produce a president remains legitimate and deserving of serious national engagement, the statement warned against reducing that aspiration to what it called “transactional political bargaining.”
“The Southeast deserves a sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership—not symbolic tokenism or bespoke arrangements tailored to satisfy one individual’s ambition.
“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,” h added the Turaki of Adamawa.
