Former Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has strongly denounced the political ambition of the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, saying that it is a breach of power rotation.
He said that, by insisting on contesting the 2027 presidential race, the former Vice President was fueling political tension not only in the North but also across the nation.
Okechukwu, who is a foundation member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), expressed his feelings in a statement he issued on Sunday in Enugu, noting that the tension that Atiku is fueling has vindicated the advocates of power rotation.
“Zoning advocates have consistently maintained that presidential power rotation is a vital instrument for managing Nigeria’s diversity.
“The current political tension demonstrates why zoning convention should not be treated as expendable item, merely to accommodate an individual’s presidential ambition, more so when he has no concrete solution to our economic quagmire,” Okechukwu stated.
According to him, the forthcoming 2027 presidential contest would have been less acrimonious if ADC had respected the principle of presidential power rotation and presented a southern candidate instead of Atiku.
He appealed to northerners “to avoid the danger of ethno-identity politics because of the ambition of one man and his cohorts, noting that countries like Sudan are yet to recover from ethnic rivalries”.
The APC chieftain argued that people in the North supporting Atiku were doing harm to national peace, equity and fairness given that power resided in the North for eight ywars before President Bola Tinubu emerged in 2023.
He noted that apart from Tinubu the South has other presidential candidates in the 2027 race, adding that “truly Atiku and Tinubu are ten and ten pence going by their antecedents”.
Okechukwu lamented that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has not recovered from Atiku’s breach of zoning in 2023 presidential election, when he defied the zoning arrangement and became the party’s presidential flag bearer.
He reminded Nigerians how patriots such as Abubakar Rimi, Umaru Shinkafi, Adamu Ciroma, and Olusola Saraki, Alex Ekwueme, Ogbonnaya Onu, among others saved the nation in 1999 from ethno-identity politics by subordinating their personal presidential ambitions to broader national unity.
The former VON DG cited the peaceful nature of presidential elections of past years in which Chief Olusegun Obasanjo contested against Chief Olu Falae in 1999; Muhammadu Buhari vs Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007, and Muhammadu Buhari vs Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in 2019.
He said that the referenced presidential polls were devoid of acrimony because power rotation was adhered to, adding those polls were all “living testimony of how rotation convention undoubtedly sustained national balance”.
Okechukwu therefore called on Atiku’s supporters and other political stakeholders “to stop framing the 2027 presidential contest as a zero-sum game between North and South”.
He said that such rhetoric could deepen ethnic divisions that could “inadvertently place our fledgling democracy in harm’s way”.
On the reports that security personnel were deployed to protect campaign posters and billboards of presidential candidates in some places, Okechukwu described the situation as “troubling development”.
He stated that deployment of security personnel to protect billboards amounted to high opportunity cost given the myriads of security problems in the land, including kidnappings, armed robberies, killings by terrorists, and sundry insurgency.
