Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s camp has issued a warning to opposition politicians against adopting an “emotion-driven” approach to reserving the 2027 presidential ticket for the South. In a statement released on Monday by Atiku’s media aide, Olusola Sanni, the camp urged political parties to base their strategies on coalition-building and electoral realities rather than on selective notions of equity. The communiqué highlighted that while the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is likely to maintain its current southern configuration centered around President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, opposition parties would be taking a significant political risk by mimicking this model without a realistic assessment of the voting landscape.
The statement argued that historical precedent does not support the notion that a challenger from the same geopolitical zone as an incumbent president can successfully unseat him. It emphasized that no incumbent president has ever been defeated by an opposition candidate from the same bloc, asserting that to insist otherwise is to enter the contest already defeated. Furthermore, the Atiku camp contended that the broader debate on regional zoning is misguided. Since the return to democracy in 1999, the South has held the presidency for approximately 18 years, while the North has held it for about ten years. The camp warned that granting another four-year term to the South would only exacerbate the existing disparity, making the claim of “rotational justice” difficult to comprehend under these circumstances.
Additionally, the statement accused certain political actors of hypocrisy for invoking zoning while previously disregarding the informal arrangement that facilitated former President Goodluck Jonathan’s emergence in 2011 following President Umar Musa Yar’Adua’s death. It asserted that it is intellectually dishonest for those who enthusiastically supported a Southern presidency in 2011, despite the North’s legitimate expectation, to now posture as custodians of rotational justice. The camp emphasized that principles should not be considered sacred only when they align with personal ambitions.
While recognizing the Southeast’s legitimate desire to produce a president, the Atiku camp cautioned against reducing the region’s aspirations to mere “transactional political bargaining.” It called for a “sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership” rather than symbolic tokenism or tailored arrangements designed to fulfill individual ambitions. In its concluding remarks, the former vice-president’s team urged opposition parties and other stakeholders to build a broad national coalition capable of challenging the incumbent administration in 2027. They stated, “Defeating an incumbent president requires realism, not romanticism; strategy, not sentiment; honesty, not selective memory.” The statement concluded by emphasizing that the opposition must decide whether its goal is to make an emotional statement or to actually win power.
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