There are moments in a nation’s history when arithmetic stops being neutral and begins to take sides. Nigeria has entered such a moment. The figures are no longer merely numbers on spreadsheets; they are signals, warnings, and verdicts. They speak with a clarity that propaganda cannot blur and with a stubbornness that denial cannot erase. One conclusion now burns through the political fog with incandescent force: 2027 is aligning decisively with Atiku Abubakar.
I have observed with a mix of disbelief and irony how some self-styled Obidients continue to delude themselves into thinking that Atiku has stepped down for Obi or will step down for Obi, as though politics is served à la carte. Repeated frustrations have driven some of them to direct their anger at Atiku on several occasions, while curiously sparing Tinubu, whose government has subjected them to agonies, poverty, and hardship.
Our restraint so far has been deliberate and mature, anchored in the clear understanding that an Atiku–Obi alignment remains fully capable of dislodging Tinubu from power. However, maturity is not an inexhaustible resource. Any assumption that one bloc enjoys a monopoly over social media influence is a dangerous illusion. The Obidients should be under no illusion that Atiku lacks digital reach; he commands a formidable network of seasoned social-media strategists capable of setting the record straight and contesting narratives decisively.
One fact remains immutable: the only circumstance that can prevent Atiku from contesting in 2027 is a contrary outcome of the ADC presidential primary. Yet, as Atiku has consciously subjected himself to a legitimate, transparent, and democratic process within the ADC, nothing stands in the way of his appearance on the 2027 ballot. He will not only secure the party’s ticket; he will win the general election.
Those who laughed in 2023, who dismissed the Waziri of Adamawa as yesterday’s man, are today confronted by the very reality they tried to ridicule into irrelevance. Atiku did not falter because he lacked capacity, credibility, or national reach. He was obstructed, deliberately, methodically, and cynically,by a coalition of internal betrayal and southern elite intrigue that chose sabotage over statesmanship and calculation over country.
Yet even under that siege, even with knives drawn from within and loyalty fractured across regions, Atiku still commanded 6,984,520 votes. That figure is not the language of defeat. It is the grammar of resilience. It is an unfinished sentence in Nigeria’s political manuscript, a mandate interrupted, not annulled; delayed, not denied.
As Nelson Mandela once reminded humanity, “It always seems impossible until it is done.” What was mocked as implausible in 2023 is steadily crystallising into inevitability. By 2027, the journey that was forcefully slowed will stand completed, not as conjecture or hope, but as history fulfilled.
THE SOUTHERN FRACTURE: WHERE AMBITION DEVOURS UNITY.
Let us strip the romance from analysis and speak with surgical honesty: the South will not enter 2027 as a single political organism. It cannot. It will not. The fractures are structural, not accidental. They are rooted in ambition stacked against ambition, ego colliding with ego, and unresolved rivalries masquerading as ideological differences.
The Obi phenomenon is not evaporating; it remains a powerful force, slicing through southern arithmetic with clinical precision. The South-East, driven by identity pride, political memory, and the embers of unfinished aspiration, remains emotionally magnetised to Peter Obi.
The South-South, meanwhile, continues as contested terrain, pulled in different directions by Atiku’s appeal, residual PDP memory, Obi’s revived momentum, and the incumbent’s transactional overtures.
The South-West, once marketed as an impregnable fortress, is no longer immune. Hunger is the most corrosive acid in politics. Fuel pain, inflation, rent spikes, transport hardship, and collapsing purchasing power have eaten deeply into ideological solidarity.
What once sounded like confidence now echoes as quiet regret. Even the loudest defenders have softened their tone, because lived reality has grown louder than propaganda.
This is why the arithmetic is merciless: no southern candidate will command anything close to 60 per cent bloc dominance in 2027—not the incumbent, not Obi, not any aspirant. The South will fragment. And in that fragmentation lies Atiku’s strategic advantage.
As Niccolò Machiavelli warned centuries ago, the wise act early, while fools wait until consequences harden into fate. The South is absorbed in the politics of ego. The North is preparing the politics of power.
THE NORTHERN CONSOLIDATION: MEMORY HARDENS INTO MANDATE.
Turn now to the North, because this is where the spine of the 2027 equation is forming. In 2023, despite elite sabotage and internal betrayal, Atiku still secured 5,233,703 votes across the North. The incumbent scraped 5,598,686, only marginally ahead, and that narrow edge remains bruised in the collective regional memory.
By 2027, this equation will not merely adjust; it will rupture.
Why? Because the North has lived the consequences.Fuel prices have cut deep into daily survival. Food inflation has tightened like a noose around households. Insecurity festers like an untreated wound. What was marketed as renewal has delivered exhaustion; what was sold as hope has arrived as hardship.
When suffering persists long enough, it ceases to be complaint and becomes mobilisation.
And the fact that key movers and shakers of the former CPC bloc within the APC,particularly those with entrenched influence across the North-West, have steadily gravitated towards the ADC has fundamentally altered the political arithmetic against Tinubu and the APC. This is not symbolic migration; it is structural realignment.
The CPC tendency once supplied APC with ideological coherence, grassroots discipline, and northern legitimacy. Its quiet dissolution into the ADC drains APC of its northern backbone and transfers organisational muscle to Atiku’s column.
Equally decisive is the rising political consciousness among Northern youths, increasingly gravitating towards Atiku. This shift is not emotional; it is rational. A generation battered by unemployment, insecurity, educational stagnation, and economic exclusion is no longer persuaded by slogans.
My daily interactions with Northern youths, across informal conversations, political discussions, and grassroots engagements,consistently offer me the privilege of reading the true mood of the North. What is forming ahead of 2027 is not a protest wave; it is a generational awakening. What is coming is more than a tsunami.
Through social media coordination, campus-based discourse, community forums, and informal political networks, a new northern youth consciousness is taking shape, one that increasingly associates Atiku with opportunity, competence, and national repair. What appears as silence today is incubation.
Across the North, Atiku’s name now functions as the symbol of an unfulfilled promise, the leader many believe should have been.Elders are closing ranks, political structures are recalibrating, and the silent majority is preparing to speak with one voice: this time, we reclaim what was denied.
This is why projections of near-total northern consolidation are not slogans. They are arithmetic shaped by experience and cemented by resentment. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned, hunger eventually strips deception of its power. Nigerians have tasted deprivation under the APC; they are now preparing to dismantle the illusion that manufactured it.
STRATEGIC CONVERGENCE: PARALLEL PATHS, SHARED DESTINY.
It is precisely this northern solidity that allows sophistication elsewhere. With the North cohering firmly behind Atiku, the opposition gains room to deploy intelligence rather than panic. This is where the emerging Atiku–Obi parallel dynamic becomes an advantage rather than a risk.
If Obi chooses to contest the presidency on a separate platform, the opposition does not automatically fragment; it re-sorts. Obi consolidates urban voters, reformist blocs, and identity-driven enthusiasm, particularly in the South-East.
Atiku, anchored by overwhelming northern backing, executes a deliberate southern reconfiguration rather than a desperate chase. Replicating Obi’s 2023 surge in 2027 will not be easy, except if Obi merges forces with Atiku. The political terrain has shifted. Every party is now alert. Tinubu is battle-ready in the South-West. Atiku is consolidating the North. The element of surprise is gone.
Tinubu and the APC are openly preparing to maximise votes in the South-West, aggressively court the South-South through transactional politics, push for decisive wins in the North-Central, retain respectable numbers in the North-West, and attempt a symbolic presence in the South-East. This strategy mirrors their 2023 pathway, but the context has changed dramatically.
In the South-West, economic hardship has eroded ethnic solidarity. In the South-South, political loyalty has become fluid and sceptical. In the North-Central, insecurity and farmer–herder crises have weakened incumbency trust. In the North-West, the CPC backbone that once powered APC mobilisation has thinned. In the South-East, tokenism cannot substitute for structural trust.
Atiku’s counterweight lies in absorbing Christian votes across both North and South through the strategic selection of a highly popular Vice-Presidential candidate from the South-East or South-South. Such a choice breaks the monopoly of Christian sentiment, reassures faith communities nationally, and recalibrates the southern arithmetic without hostility.
The decisive instrument here is the vice-presidential choice.
By selecting a popular South-East Vice-Presidential candidate deeply rooted in the Christian community and respected across denominational lines, Atiku deploys a masterstroke. This choice simultaneously gravitates Christian voters nationally, penetrates the South-East and South-South, and dissolves monopoly psychology without antagonism. Obi is not attacked; his aspiration is respected. But exclusivity is broken.
Once exclusivity dissolves, margins move.Once margins move, outcomes change.
THE NUMBERS THAT COLLAPSE PROPAGANDA.
Now comes the arithmetic that no chant can drown out. In 2023, Obi secured 6,101,533 votes without governors or legislative machinery. Atiku secured 6,984,520 votes despite sabotage and betrayal. These are not rival minorities; they are two mass constituencies.
With disciplined non-aggression,complementary messaging, and quiet cooperation on voter protection, the opposition ceiling expands while the incumbent’s margin collapses. What critics fear as “vote splitting” becomes vote multiplication.
The 2027 ballot will not listen to jingles. It will listen to hunger. It will listen to despair. It will listen to broken promises. And it will listen to the man who has walked Nigeria’s political valleys and climbed its governance peaks.
As Obafemi Awolowo once warned, those who seek to rule must first learn to serve. Tinubu promised service and delivered suffering. Atiku served and still seeks to serve.
Governors do not win elections.
Moneybags do not win elections.
Propaganda does not win elections.
People win elections.
ADC: NOT A DETOUR, BUT A HIGHWAY.
To those who whisper doubts about Atiku flying the ADC flag, the correction is simple and final. Parties do not create leaders of Atiku’s stature. Leaders of Atiku’s calibre create movements, bend structures, and reshape platforms.
In 2023, without full party loyalty, without southern governors, and under deliberate sabotage, Atiku still gathered nearly seven million votes. If that was possible under siege, imagine the momentum when the platform is clean, the loyalty clear, and the mission uncluttered. ADC is not limitation; it is liberation.
If the old platform was a cage of treachery, ADC is open sky. If the old platform was a sinking ship of hypocrisy, ADC is the ark—built for rescue, not betrayal.
HISTORY’S VERDICT, ALREADY INKED.
History sides with the determined, not the doubters. Mandela rebuilt South Africa not because of a logo, but because destiny answers to courage, not acronyms. Churchill returned from exile to lead when Britain needed resolve. Lincoln changed platforms to save a nation’s soul, and history immortalised him.
Atiku’s movement is cut from that same fabric. It is not defection; it is disruption. He is not playing draughts; he is playing chess on a board called destiny, and the endgame is approaching.
The North is uniting.
The South is dividing.
Hunger is voting.
Memory is mobilising.
When the curtain falls in 2027, Nigeria will not be guessing. Nigeria will be rejoicing. And the name Atiku Abubakar will echo like the anthem of a new dawn—not because of noise, but because destiny finally aligned with preparation.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
