Olusola Sanni, Atiku’s media assistant, contended in a statement given to reporters in Abuja that although the ruling All Progressives Congress might maintain its southern presidential arrangement around Tinubu, it would be politically foolish for the opposition to follow suit without taking electoral realities into account.
The statement emphasized that strategy, coalition building, and electoral calculations should take precedence over sentiment or selective moral considerations in politics.
“The first and most obvious question is this: how does a Southern opposition candidate realistically unseat a sitting Southern president? There is no precedent for this kind of result in Nigerian political history.
“No incumbent president has ever been defeated by an opposition challenger from the same geopolitical bloc. Sanni stated, “To insist otherwise is to enter the contest already defeated.”
He also challenged the moral justification being advanced for southern zoning, arguing that the South would have spent more years in power than the North by 2027.
In the Fourth Republic, the South would have had the presidency for almost eighteen years by 2027, while the North would have had it for roughly ten. That gap becomes much more if the South holds onto power for an additional four years.
Under the pretense of equity, Sanni continued, “it becomes difficult to understand the justice in an argument that seeks to deepen an already existing imbalance.”
The Atiku camp further accused some political actors of hypocrisy over the zoning debate, particularly those who supported the emergence of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 after the death of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
While acknowledging the South-East’s aspiration to produce a president, the statement warned against reducing the demand to mere political bargaining.
The former VP camp urged opposition parties to focus on building a broad national coalition capable of defeating the incumbent administration rather than pursuing what it described as emotional narratives.
It takes strategy rather than sentiment, honesty rather than selective memory, and reality rather than romance to defeat an incumbent president. The statement continued, “The opposition must determine whether its objective is to truly gain power or to make an emotional statement.”
