Ahead of the 2027 presidential election, the Presidency has called on northerners to respect the unwritten power rotation pact between the northern and southern parts of the country.
Personal Assistant to the President on Radio and Broadcast (Office of the Vice President), Hajya Rahma Abdulmajid, made this call in Kano on Sunday during the Grand Inauguration & Strategic Media Awards Ceremony of Matan Arewa 4 Tinubu Again (MATA).
Abdulmajid warned that the former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s personal ambition should not be allowed to jeopardize the peace and unity of the country.
The Presidential aide implored the North to honour the current eight-year tenure being served by the South to completion, in the interest of reciprocity and national stability.
Specifically, she said Nigeria’s national stability hangs by a slender thread, demanding that the North honours the unwritten power rotation pact and allow the South to complete its full eight-year tenure, warning that breaking this foundational trust could jeopardise the country’s unity.
According to her, Nigeria’s power rotation arrangement is not a sectional concession but a reciprocal compact that has stabilised the Fourth Republic.
Making a veiled reference to former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, who she recalled attended and participated in the famous Kaduna meeting where the power rotation agreement was reached, Abdulmajid argued that the North cannot sacrifice the stability of Nigeria for the ambition of one man.
Tracing the origin to Kaduna, she noted that when military rule ended, patriots negotiated a framework for unity, maintaining, just as she said, “And present in that room was Atiku Abubakar himself, as later confirmed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume.
“Chief Sunday Awoniyi, the great Northern elder, stood up in 1998 and declared that the North should not field a candidate, in order to heal the wounds of June 12 and soothe the pain of the South,” she added.
She further listed other patriots who shaped the understanding to include Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, speaking for the South; Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, speaking for the North; Dr. Alex Ekwueme, and Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo.
Insisting on the power rotation arrangement, the presidency said, “In 1999, when the guns of military rule finally fell silent, this nation did not just switch governments—we made a sacred promise. Our founding patriots gathered in Kaduna with one urgent, defining question echo-chambered in their minds: How do we keep Nigeria one?
“And from that sacred deliberation came a compact: not a sectional concession, but a reciprocal agreement. This gentleman’s agreement decreed that power must rotate between North and South every eight years—an arrangement to guarantee fairness, to ensure stability, and to guarantee that no Nigerian ever feels like a stranger in his own country.”
On how the arrangement worked, Abdulmajid said it survived because it was honoured.
“This is not fiction. This is our history. And how did it work? It worked because we honoured it. In 1999, we gave it to the South—Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, eight years, from 1999 to 2007. Then we gave it to the North: Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007. But death, a painful death, cut his tenure short in 2010.
“His vice, Goodluck Jonathan from the South, took over. The North felt cheated. The North said our turn was not complete, and that agitation was legitimate. What happened? In 2015, power returned to the North. The late former President Muhammadu Buhari, eight full years, 2015 to 2023! The sequence was restored! The principle survived,” she stated.
