Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned opposition parties against zoning their 2027 presidential ticket to the South, saying such a move could weaken chances of defeating President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In a statement by his spokesperson, Olusola Sanni, Atiku described the push as “self-defeating band intellectually dishonest,” insisting politics should be based on strategy and “hard electoral arithmetic,” not “emotional talking points.”
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“The first and most obvious question is this: how does a Southern opposition candidate realistically unseat a sitting Southern president?” the statement asked, adding that no incumbent president has been defeated by an opposition candidate from the same region.
The camp also argued that by 2027, the South would have spent about 18 years in power in the Fourth Republic, compared to about 10 years for the North, making the zoning argument difficult to justify “under the guise of equity.”
Atiku further accused some politicians of hypocrisy for supporting Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency in 2011 after the d+ath of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, but now defending zoning as a sacred principle.
He, however, said the Southeast deserves “a sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership,” not “symbolic tokenism.”
