No Southern Candidate Can Unseat Tinubu – Atiku’s Camp

Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima

The camp of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has cautioned opposition parties against zoning the 2027 presidential ticket exclusively to the South. Atiku’s media aide, Olusola Sanni, recently had his say via a press statement, and Nigerians have been reacting.

Warning that such a strategy could pave the way for Tinubu’s easy re-election, he argued that while the APC might retain its southern presidential configuration around Tinubu, it would be politically unwise for the opposition to adopt the same approach without considering electoral realities.

He concluded by stressing that politics should be guided by strategy, coalition-building and electoral calculations rather than sentiment or selective moral arguments.

His words, “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.

By 2027, the South would have held presidential power for approximately 18 years in the Fourth Republic, compared to about 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,

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 South-East deserves a sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership, not symbolic tokenism or bespoke arrangements tailored to satisfy one individual’s ambition.

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.”

WOW.