2027 Presidency: Atiku’s northern ticket campaign faces resistance

Fresh cracks have emerged within Nigeria’s opposition bloc ahead of the 2027 presidential election as major political parties and pressure groups faulted the position of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar that no southern candidate can defeat President Bola Tinubu in the next general election. The parties, including the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Labour Party, Young Progressives Party, Social Democratic Party, New Nigeria People’s Party, the Nigeria Democratic Congress, as well as both the Kwankwasiyya and Obidient Movements, disagreed with the former vice president over his stand. In separate exclusive interviews, they insisted that the presidency should remain in the South in the interest of fairness, national cohesion and political stability.

The disagreement followed a statement issued on Sunday by Atiku’s media aide, Olusola Sanni, warning opposition parties against zoning their presidential tickets to the South. The former vice president’s camp argued that while the ruling All Progressives Congress may retain its southern presidential configuration around Tinubu, it would be politically unwise for the opposition to adopt the same approach. “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 had read.

The Atiku camp also argued that by 2027, the South would have spent more years in power than the North since the return of democracy in 1999. “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,” Sanni outlined.