The camp of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has cautioned opposition political actors against adopting what it described as an emotional and self-defeating push for the 2027 presidential ticket to be zoned exclusively to the South.
In a statement issued on Monday by Atiku’s media aide, Olusola Sanni, the former vice president’s camp said the opposition must prioritise political strategy, coalition-building and electoral realities over sentiments and selective interpretations of equity.
The statement argued that while the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, might retain its current southern presidential configuration around President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it would be politically risky for opposition parties to adopt the same approach without a realistic assessment of the electoral landscape.
According to the statement, no opposition candidate from the same geopolitical bloc as a sitting president has ever succeeded in defeating an incumbent president in Nigeria’s political history.
“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 also challenged the moral argument being advanced in support of southern zoning, insisting that the issue of equity should be viewed in the context of the country’s power-sharing history since the return to democratic rule in 1999.
It stated that by 2027, the South would have occupied the presidency for about 18 years in the Fourth Republic, compared to approximately 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.
The statement further accused some political actors of hypocrisy and selective memory over the zoning debate, especially those who supported the emergence of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 following the death of former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
According to the Atiku camp, such actors abandoned the informal zoning arrangement at the time but now present it as an inviolable political principle.
“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 statement said.
While acknowledging that the Southeast’s aspiration to produce Nigeria’s president remains legitimate, the statement warned against reducing the demand to what it termed “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,” it added.
The former vice president’s camp urged opposition parties and stakeholders to focus on building a broad national coalition capable of challenging the incumbent administration in the 2027 election.
“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 concluded.
