Former lawmaker, Shehu Sani, has disclosed an alleged political strategy by former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and other Northern elites to unseat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the 2027 presidential elections. In a detailed interview with Sunday Sun in Abuja, Sani revealed that the strategy hinges on exploiting regional disparities and security challenges. Sani alleged that Atiku who was the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2019 and 2023 elections, plans to capitalise on various issues, including the relocation of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) offices to Lagos State, the perceived dominance of South-Western appointees in Tinubu’s administration, and ongoing security concerns in Northern Nigeria. Sani noted that Atiku and his political allies intend to paint President Tinubu as favouring his regional base over the broader national interest. “They are trying to present him [Tinubu] as an ethnicist, a regionalist, and someone who betrayed Northern Nigeria despite receiving significant electoral support from the region,” Sani said. He described the move as a calculated attempt to sway Northern voters against Tinubu, framing it as a necessity to reclaim power. Despite revealing these strategies, Sani urged Atiku and his cohort to exercise patience and respect the informal rotational presidency arrangement between the North and the South. “Atiku has worked hard to promote peace and unity in Nigeria, and it would be prudent for him to allow the South to complete their tenure,” he added. Speaking on Atiku’s recent visit to Daura, he said, “You see, it is a tradition that each time there is a Sallah celebration, people pay homage to former leaders. You pay homage to former leaders so that you get the necessary blessings from them, but in the case of what has happened recently, the fact of the matter is that Northern political leaders are regrouping, and their focal point is Buhari. “They still want to use Buhari to whip up Northern regional sentiment as it was done in the CPC days and garner the votes they can in order to eject Tinubu from power. “There is no Northern leader today that can serve as a rallying point. He was the one who was a former president and he used to have a fanatical following. So, what they are trying to do is to present Tinubu as a bad case, as an ethnicist, as a regionalist, as a person who betrayed Northern Nigeria, as a man who was voted by the North, but he is serving his own people and the need for Northerners to wake up and evict him out of power. “It is their strategy. And they want to do that by making sure that that idea is sold to the Northern masses and then, from there, they seize power. But I have to draw attention to two facts – first of all, Buhari was a colossal failure. “He has led this country for eight years and he left the North worse than he met it, and the treasury of the country was looted under him; the economy was pillaged under him and the nation was plundered and terrorism and banditry was at the highest peak under Buhari administration.”

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