A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has warned that the African Democratic Congress (ADC) risks breaching Nigeria’s rotational presidency convention due to the growing influence of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, accusing him of a pattern of actions that have previously destabilised opposition parties.
Okechukwu cast aspersions on Atiku over what he described as the former Vice President’s alleged breach of the rotational presidency convention, blaming him for laying the foundation for the current instability within Nigeria’s democracy and opposition politics.
He was reacting to Atiku’s warning that Nigeria’s democracy is facing an existential threat, allegedly due to the deliberate weakening of opposition parties by the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Okechukwu advised the former vice president to “dig deeper”, insisting that a more honest introspection would reveal how Nigeria’s democracy descended into its present state following the alleged violation of the rotation principle during the 2023 presidential election.
He noted that non-adherence to the rotation convention and Section 7 of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Constitution, allegedly by Atiku Abubakar, contributed significantly to the destabilisation of the PDP.
According to him, Atiku is regrettably one of the foremost culprits of what he described as an unforced error that gravely cannibalised the PDP.
“Digging deeper will inform His Excellency Atiku Abubakar that the breach of the rotation convention—an elite consensus foundation of the Fourth Republic—played a decisive role in this sordid mess,” Okechukwu said.
“My fear is that he is about to repeat the same mistake in the ADC, especially as no other ADC presidential aspirant has his war chest.”
Okechukwu recalled that the rotation convention was consciously formalised in 1999 as an elite consensus to promote unity, equity, inclusion, and national stability through a turn-by-turn rotation of presidential power between the North and South.
He further argued that without this rotation convention, Atiku Abubakar himself would not have emerged Vice President in 1999.
Going further, he noted that had patriotic northern political leaders such as Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Umaru Shinkafi, Adamu Ciroma, Bamanga Tukur and Dr Sola Saraki, among others, not honoured the zoning arrangement, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo—having just emerged alive from General Sani Abacha’s gulag, where General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua lost his life—might well have abstained from contesting the presidency.
The APC chieftain also reminded Atiku of his dramatic walkout from the 2014 PDP National Convention, where he protested that it was the North’s turn to produce the President and accused then-President Goodluck Jonathan of breaching the rotation convention—an action that culminated in his defection to the APC.
“Whereas one admits that my great party, the APC, has its own fault lines, is it not a calamity that the same Atiku Abubakar, widely acknowledged as the mastermind of PDP’s rotation breach and its resultant destabilisation, is now allegedly setting the stage for a similar breach within the ADC?” Okechukwu queried.
He therefore maintained that Atiku Abubakar’s assertion that “the systematic weakening of opposition platforms represents a grave danger to Nigeria’s democratic future” deserves more rigorous self-scrutiny and contextual honesty.
Okechukwu further argued that Atiku cannot inherit former President Muhammadu Buhari’s estimated 12 million vote bank, claiming that many in the North still strongly subscribe to the rotation principle as the way forward for the sustenance of democratic rule in the country.
