{"id":17043,"date":"2026-01-11T12:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T12:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/17043\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T12:47:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T12:47:06","slug":"adc-risks-breaching-rotational-presidency-principle-over-atiku-okechukwu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/17043\/","title":{"rendered":"ADC risks breaching rotational presidency principle over Atiku \u2014 Okechukwu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"image-caption\">Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar<\/p>\n<p>A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has warned that the African Democratic Congress (ADC) risks breaching Nigeria\u2019s rotational presidency convention due to the growing influence of former Vice President <a href=\"https:\/\/dailypost.ng\/2026\/01\/11\/adc-atikus-kasuwa-ndollar-primary-threat-to-nigerias-democracy-not-tinubu-okechukwu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Atiku Abubakar<\/a>, accusing him of a pattern of actions that have previously destabilised opposition parties.<\/p>\n<p>Okechukwu cast aspersions on Atiku over what he described as the former Vice President\u2019s alleged breach of the rotational presidency convention, blaming him for laying the foundation for the current instability within Nigeria\u2019s democracy and opposition politics.<br \/>He was reacting to Atiku\u2019s warning that Nigeria\u2019s democracy is facing an existential threat, allegedly due to the deliberate weakening of opposition parties by the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.<br \/>Okechukwu advised the former vice president to \u201cdig deeper\u201d, insisting that a more honest introspection would reveal how Nigeria\u2019s democracy descended into its present state following the alleged violation of the rotation principle during the 2023 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>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.<br \/>According to him, Atiku is regrettably one of the foremost culprits of what he described as an unforced error that gravely cannibalised the PDP.<br \/>\u201cDigging deeper will inform His Excellency Atiku Abubakar that the breach of the rotation convention\u2014an elite consensus foundation of the Fourth Republic\u2014played a decisive role in this sordid mess,\u201d Okechukwu said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy fear is that he is about to repeat the same mistake in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/1620185916\/posts\/pfbid0FveCLXsskx3MMLz39SkFm9rxxVH1hKm6RLstivLWSVE4hpYv5kn7a66hpaeYMYssl\/?app=fbl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ADC<\/a>, especially as no other ADC presidential aspirant has his war chest.\u201d<br \/>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.<br \/>He further argued that without this rotation convention, Atiku Abubakar himself would not have emerged Vice President in 1999.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014having just emerged alive from General Sani Abacha\u2019s gulag, where General Shehu Musa Yar\u2019Adua lost his life\u2014might well have abstained from contesting the presidency.<br \/>The APC chieftain also reminded Atiku of his dramatic walkout from the 2014 PDP National Convention, where he protested that it was the North\u2019s turn to produce the President and accused then-President Goodluck Jonathan of breaching the rotation convention\u2014an action that culminated in his defection to the APC.<br \/>\u201cWhereas 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\u2019s rotation breach and its resultant destabilisation, is now allegedly setting the stage for a similar breach within the ADC?\u201d Okechukwu queried.<\/p>\n<p>He therefore maintained that Atiku Abubakar\u2019s assertion that \u201cthe systematic weakening of opposition platforms represents a grave danger to Nigeria\u2019s democratic future\u201d deserves more rigorous self-scrutiny and contextual honesty.<br \/>Okechukwu further argued that Atiku cannot inherit former President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[5973,1579,122,10903,3848,10904],"class_list":{"0":"post-17043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"tag-adc","9":"tag-atiku","10":"tag-nigeria","11":"tag-okechukwu","12":"tag-presidency","13":"tag-principle"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}