Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned opposition parties against zoning their 2027 presidential ticket to the South, describing the move as politically dangerous and strategically flawed.
In a statement issued by his spokesperson, Olusola Sanni, Atiku said it would be “self-defeating” for opposition parties to adopt the same zoning logic as the ruling All Progressives Congress ahead of the next general election.
According to him, while the APC may seek to retain power in the South around President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the opposition must focus on electoral strategy rather than sentiment.
“Politics must be driven by coalition-building, strategy, and hard electoral arithmetic, not emotional narratives or selective moral arguments,” the statement said.
Atiku argued that no opposition candidate from the South has ever defeated a sitting Southern president in Nigeria’s political history, warning that insisting on such a path could hand the ruling party an easy advantage.
“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 noted.
The former vice president also challenged the moral basis for southern zoning, claiming the South would have controlled presidential power for about 18 years in the Fourth Republic by 2027, compared to roughly 10 years for the North.
“If the South retains power for another four years, that disparity widens further. It becomes difficult to justify deepening an already existing imbalance under the guise of equity,” the statement added.
Atiku further accused some political actors of hypocrisy over zoning, referencing the 2011 succession crisis following the death of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
He said politicians who supported former President Goodluck Jonathan to remain in office despite the North’s expectation under the zoning arrangement cannot now present themselves as defenders of rotational justice.
“Principles do not become sacred only when they align with personal ambition,” the statement said.
While acknowledging the Southeast’s aspiration to produce Nigeria’s president as legitimate, Atiku warned against reducing the demand to “transactional political bargaining.”
“The Southeast deserves a credible and sustainable pathway to national leadership, not symbolic tokenism tailored to satisfy individual ambition,” the statement added.
