2027 zoning debate: Opposition must choose strategy over sentiment — Atiku camp warns

The media office of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has cautioned opposition political actors against embracing what it described as a self-defeating and intellectually dishonest narrative that insists the 2027 presidential ticket must be zoned exclusively to the South.

In a statement issued on Monday in Abuja, signed by Olusola Sanni, media aide to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the camp said while the ruling APC may understandably retain its southern presidential configuration around incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it would amount to political naivety for the opposition to adopt the same logic without a sober assessment of electoral realities.

The statement noted that politics must be driven by strategy, coalition-building, and hard electoral arithmetic—not emotional talking points or selective moral 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.

The Atiku camp further argued that the moral argument being advanced in favour of southern zoning collapses under scrutiny.

“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,” the statement added.

The statement also accused some political actors of selective memory and opportunism, particularly those who abandoned the zoning principle in 2011 following the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, only to now present it as a sacred political doctrine.

“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.”

While affirming that the Southeast’s aspiration to produce a president remains legitimate and deserving of serious national engagement, the statement warned against reducing that aspiration to what it called “transactional political bargaining.”

“The Southeast deserves a sustainable and credible pathway to national leadership—not symbolic tokenism or bespoke arrangements tailored to satisfy one individual’s ambition,” it stated.

The statement concluded by urging the opposition to focus on building a credible national coalition capable of defeating the incumbent rather than embracing narratives that may inadvertently strengthen President Tinubu’s re-election prospects.

“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.”