Atiku Warns Opposition Against Zoning 2027 Presidency To South

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has urged opposition parties in Nigeria to reconsider plans to zone their 2027 presidential ticket to the South, arguing that such a move could weaken their chances of defeating President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the next general election.

In a statement issued on Monday by his spokesperson, Olusola Sanni, Atiku described the growing calls for southern zoning among opposition parties as politically risky and strategically flawed.

According to him, while the ruling All
Progressives Congress may choose to retain power in the South to protect the incumbent president; opposition parties should not adopt the same approach without carefully considering electoral realities.

He stressed that politics should be guided by strategy, coalition-building and electoral calculations rather than sentiments or emotional 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.

Atiku further argued that the moral justification for zoning the presidency to the South does not hold when examined against Nigeria’s democratic history.

According to him, by 2027, the South would have occupied the presidency for about 18 years in the Fourth Republic, compared to roughly 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,” he stated.

The former presidential candidate also accused some political actors of hypocrisy over the zoning debate, noting that many of those now championing rotational presidency abandoned the principle in 2011 after the death of former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

“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,” the statement added.

While acknowledging the Southeast’s aspiration to produce a Nigerian president as legitimate, Atiku warned against reducing the demand to what he described as political tokenism designed to serve personal ambitions.

He urged opposition parties to focus on building a strong national coalition capable of unseating the ruling party in 2027 rather than embracing narratives that may strengthen Tinubu’s re-election bid.

“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.

The comments come amid recent moves by the Nigeria Democratic Congress and some opposition groups to zone their 2027 presidential ticket to the South.