The camp of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has cautioned opposition parties against zoning the 2027 presidential ticket to the South, warning that such a move could hand President Bola Tinubu an easy path to re-election.
In a statement issued on Monday by Atiku’s media aide, Olusola Sanni, the former vice president’s camp argued that while the ruling All Progressives Congress may retain its southern presidential arrangement around Tinubu, it would be politically risky for opposition parties to adopt the same strategy.
The statement maintained that politics should be driven by electoral calculations, coalition-building, and strategy rather than sentiment.
According to Sanni, no incumbent Nigerian president has ever been defeated by an opposition candidate from the same geopolitical region.
“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,” the statement read.
The Atiku camp also questioned the moral argument behind continued southern zoning, noting that by 2027, the South would have held presidential power for about 18 years in the Fourth Republic, compared to roughly 10 years for the North.
“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 inconsistency over zoning debates, referencing support for former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 following the death of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
While acknowledging the South-East’s aspiration to produce a president, the Atiku camp warned against what it described as “symbolic tokenism” tailored to individual ambitions.
It urged opposition parties to prioritise building a broad national coalition capable of defeating the incumbent administration ahead of the 2027 elections.
