Atiku’s victory will end rotational presidency in Nigeria, says Shehu Sani

KADUNA — Former Senator Shehu Sani has waded into one of Nigerian politics’ most sensitive fault lines, declaring that if Atiku Abubakar wins the 2027 presidential election, it will effectively mark the end of the unwritten North-South rotational presidency arrangement that has governed Nigeria’s power transitions since 1999.

ValidViewNetwork can confirm that Sani’s remarks add a fresh voice to a debate that has trailed Atiku’s candidacy since he emerged as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) flagbearer, given that convention holds the presidency should return to the South in 2031 after President Bola Tinubu’s tenure.

This is an arrangement an Atiku victory in 2027 would immediately disrupt.

Findings show the irony runs deep. Atiku himself has publicly admitted he was wrong to have once opposed rotational presidency, telling ARISE News he now regrets not backing the late Vice President Alex Ekwueme’s proposal for rotation across all six geopolitical zones.

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He has since promised that, if elected, he would pursue a constitutional amendment establishing a six-year single-term rotational presidency, a pledge critics say sits awkwardly beside his own 2027 bid, which by convention should not even be his turn.

The Presidency’s own rebuke

According to reports gotten by ValidViewNetwork, presidential aide Bayo Onanuga has separately urged Atiku to “jettison” his 2027 ambition entirely on these same grounds, dismissing as “dubious political arithmetic” Atiku’s counter-argument that the South has already governed longer than the North since 1999 and is therefore not owed the next term.

A fight bigger than one candidate

ValidViewNetwork gathered that Ohanaeze Ndigbo has gone further still, accusing Atiku of tarnishing his standing among the Igbo by pursuing what it called Northern political hegemony at the expense of the rotation principle.

Whether Sani’s intervention shifts the conversation or simply adds another voice to an already crowded chorus, the underlying question, who Nigeria owes the presidency to next, and whether that debt is even real — looks set to dominate the road to 2027. ValidViewNetwork reports.