2027: Atiku's Team Issues Warning That No Challenger From the South Can Oust Tinubu

A warning has been issued by the camp of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to opposition parties, cautioning them against exclusively zoning the 2027 presidential ticket to the South, as this could potentially pave the way for an easy re-election for President Bola Tinubu.

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This warning was conveyed in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja by Atiku's media aide, Olusola Sanni, who argued that the opposition should not adopt the same approach as the ruling All Progressives Congress without considering the electoral realities.

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Sanni emphasized that politics should be guided by strategy, coalition-building, and electoral calculations, rather than sentiment or selective moral arguments, in order to achieve success.

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A crucial question was posed by Sanni, asking how a Southern opposition candidate could realistically unseat a sitting Southern president, given that Nigerian political history offers no precedent for such an outcome.

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Sanni pointed out that no incumbent president has ever been defeated by an opposition challenger from the same geopolitical bloc, and to insist otherwise would be to enter the contest already defeated.

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The moral justification for southern zoning was also challenged by Sanni, who argued that by 2027, the South would have spent more years in power than the North, with approximately 18 years in the Fourth Republic compared to about 10 years for the North.

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If the South retains power for another four years, the disparity would widen even further, making it difficult to understand the justice in an argument that seeks to deepen an already existing imbalance under the guise of equity, according to Sanni.

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The Atiku camp accused some political actors of hypocrisy over the zoning debate, particularly those who supported the emergence of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 after the death of late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.

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The statement acknowledged the South-East's aspiration to produce a president, but warned against reducing the demand to mere political bargaining, as this would undermine the region's legitimate claim to national leadership.

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It was deemed intellectually dishonest by the Atiku camp for those who supported a Southern presidency under Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 to now suddenly posture as custodians of rotational justice, given the North's legitimate expectation under the informal zoning arrangement.

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The statement emphasized that principles do not become sacred only when they align with personal ambition, and that the South-East deserves a sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership, rather than symbolic tokenism or bespoke arrangements tailored to satisfy one individual's ambition.

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The former VP camp urged opposition parties to focus on building a broad national coalition capable of defeating the incumbent administration, rather than pursuing emotional narratives that are unlikely to yield success.

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According to the statement, defeating an incumbent president requires realism, not romanticism; strategy, not sentiment; and honesty, not selective memory, and the opposition must decide whether its goal is to make an emotional statement or to actually win power.