Onanuga Fires Atiku: Tinubu Must Finish the South’s Eight-Year Slot

Onanuga blasts Atiku over zoning, citing Yar’Adua and Tinubu’s right to complete the South’s turn before 2027.

April 16, 2026

4–6 minutes

2027 Election, APC, Atiku Abubakar, Atlantic Post, Bayo Onanuga, featured, Nigeria Politics, Power Rotation

Bayo Onanuga has thrown fresh petrol on Nigeria’s 2027 succession fire, branding Atiku Abubakar a repeat offender in the battle over power rotation and insisting that President Bola Tinubu must finish eight years in office.

In a hard-edged X post reported by major outlets, the Presidency’s Information and Strategy aide said Atiku was advancing a “self-serving argument” and warned that the former vice-president should bury any fresh presidential ambition because, in Onanuga’s telling, the South’s turn must run through 2031.

The immediate trigger was Atiku’s interview on Arise Television’s Prime Time on Wednesday, in which he rejected the idea that Nigeria is bound by a national zoning rule.

He argued that only the PDP has zoning written into its constitution, said the South has governed for longer than the North since 1999, and indicated that he would support rotational presidency if it were made constitutional.

TheCable also reported that Atiku revisited an older constitutional debate, saying he had once opposed Alex Ekwueme’s rotation proposal before later admitting that was a mistake.

Onanuga’s counterattack was blunt. He wrote that Atiku “will never learn”, accused him of trying to disrupt Nigeria’s power rotation arrangement, and said his 2023 presidential bid fractured the PDP after he attempted to succeed another northerner who had already spent eight years in office.

Onanuga’s central line was even sharper: “Since Buhari completed his eight years, Tinubu too must complete his own.”

That response rests on a long and messy political history, one that predates Tinubu and Atiku’s current rivalry.

Reuters explained as far back as 2010 that Nigeria’s top office was governed not by a constitutional rule but by an elite understanding that power should alternate between North and South after two four-year terms.

Reuters also recorded the crucial interruption that still shapes today’s argument: Yar’Adua’s death in 2010, after which Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, succeeded him.

The core dispute, then and now, is whether that succession was an accidental breach or a permanent reset.

That distinction matters because Onanuga is trying to convert political memory into political obligation. His case is simple enough: the North had its eight-year run under Buhari, the South began a fresh cycle with Tinubu in 2023, and therefore any northern bid in 2027 is, in his view, premature and disruptive.

Atiku’s counter is equally clear: rotation may be a useful political principle, but it is not a binding national law, and the numbers since 1999, he argues, favour the South.

The argument is not about arithmetic alone. It is about who gets to define fairness in a federation that still relies heavily on informal bargains.

The timing of the clash is politically loaded. Atiku is no longer speaking purely as a PDP elder statesman. Atlantic Post reported in November 2025 that he formally joined the African Democratic Congress, signalling a realignment in opposition politics ahead of 2027, and Punch reported the same registration in Adamawa State.

That means his zoning rhetoric is now being read not just as theory, but as campaign positioning inside a new political home.

The ADC itself has been careful not to hand anyone an early victory. Channels Television reported in March 2026 that the party had not decided on zoning its presidential ticket and would not be “blackmailed” into an early declaration.

That leaves Atiku in a coalition space where Peter Obi, Rotimi Amaechi and other names are still being floated, while the party insists its decision will come later.

In other words, Onanuga’s attack is not only aimed at Atiku; it is also aimed at freezing the opposition into a defensive position before it settles its own house.

There is also a deeper political irony here. Atiku now presents himself as a believer in rotational presidency, yet TheCable’s report shows that he once fought against that very idea in the era of Alex Ekwueme, only to later say he regretted it.

That history gives the Presidency an easy opening: it can portray Atiku not as a guardian of fairness, but as a veteran tactician who embraces zoning when it suits him and dismisses it when it does not.

Still, the real story is bigger than Atiku’s personal ambitions. Nigeria’s zoning debate remains an unwritten compact, powerful because it is political, yet fragile because it is not constitutional.

Reuters’ reporting from 2010 makes that plain, and the same uncertainty remains visible now. Onanuga wants the South’s turn to be treated as settled law by political convention.

Atiku wants the convention to be judged against present arithmetic and, if necessary, constitutionalised.

Between those positions lies the unresolved question at the heart of the 2027 race: is Nigeria governed by a stable elite bargain, or by whoever can break the bargain first?

For now, Onanuga has succeeded in shifting the argument from a quiet zoning chat into a full-scale national security and legitimacy debate.

If Tinubu’s camp wins the narrative, the South’s eight-year claim hardens into a political entitlement. If Atiku’s camp wins, 2027 becomes a referendum on whether the zoning tradition still deserves to control Nigeria’s succession politics.

Either way, the battle has moved far beyond a single interview and a single X post. It is now a fight over who owns Nigeria’s democratic memory.