As the 2027 Presidential election gathered momentum across the country, Chief Bode George, a former Deputy Chairman and member of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has said the party will meet its end if former Vice President Atiku Abubakar secures the party’s 2027 presidential ticket.
George, who applauded the PDP governors for putting on their thinking caps and rejecting the coalition led by Atiku, made this remark while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today program on Monday.
The PDP chieftain noted that Atiku has not shown himself to be a leader of the party because he has not waded into the intra-party squabbles that have befallen the party in recent times.
This was as Bode George said he equally doesn’t want Tinubu to be re-elected in 2027, adding that he wants his party to win the next election with a southern candidate.
“If he (Atiku) picks it (PDP’s ticket), that is the end of this party. If he picks it by manipulation, which was what was done the last time, we will not accept it.
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“No, if he is the leader of the party, he would have waded into it (the crisis). The fact that he was the presidential candidate of the party at the last election doesn’t mean he is a bona fide, fixated leader of the party. If he’s running for his private interest, it’s different from the interest of the party.
“He cannot be. This is what I am saying. There were eight years in the north, there should be eight years in the south. That is the dictate, that is the doctrine of the PDP. I can’t say he cannot contest; he can go to any party because it is his constitutional right, but as far as we are concerned, he cannot be the candidate.”
“There are rules. Section 7, Sub-section 3C of our constitution. It states that once the presidential candidate has been in the South for eight years, it had to go to the north. And after another eight years, it would come to the south. Is Atiku from the South-West, South-South or South-East?”
New Telegraph recalls that Atiku, PDP’s 2023 flag bearer, came second after ex-Lagos governor Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the last poll. The former vice president has been in a race to become Nigeria’s president for over three decades and has been the presidential candidate of different parties six times.
Atiku championed an inter-party alliance that birthed a coalition on Thursday, March 20, 2025. The opposition arrowhead, alongside former Anambra governor Peter Obi, ex-Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, amongst others, announced the coalition as a springboard to oust incumbent Tinubu, whose administration has been accused of mismanaging the economy, with an all-time high inflation and unprecedented cost of living.
