Top Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Abba Moro, says the southern region of the country should be allowed to produce Nigeria’s next president in the 2027 election to complete the eight-year unwritten power rotation code between the southern and northern regions of the country.
The Senate Minority Leader, who was on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme, warned that political parties planning to field northern candidates might lose out in the next poll.
The Benue South lawmaker explained that one of the reasons his party, the PDP, lost in the 2023 presidential poll was because a northerner was fielded as the flag bearer to succeed a northerner, an idea Nigerians rejected with their votes.
In the 2023 election, the PDP fielded former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as presidential candidate to replace then-President Muhammadu Buhari, who was in power for eight years. Atiku and the late Buhari hail from the northern region of Nigeria.
Moro said, “In 2023, the PDP to unseat the government of APC, decided to put its best foot forward and at that time, picked Atiku Abubakar against the code of an unwritten agreement of North-South presidency.
“It backfired.
“The majority of Nigerians at that time chose a southern candidate to fulfill the righteousness of the unwritten convention of the North-South rotation. That presidency will be four years by 2027.”
Though the lawmaker did not disclose his preferred candidate, he said the constitution allowed “an individual to be in office for four years and two terms” and that should be respected.
“Again, it is going to present some little somersaults if, against the backdrop of what happened in 2023, you begin to tinker with the idea of getting power back to the north.
“The reasonable thing to do is: the south should produce the next president to complete eight years of the south, and automatically, even though unwritten, Nigerians will be looking up to the north to produce the next president in 2031.”
Moro also described the exit of Atiku and his 2023 running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa, from the PDP as good riddance to bad rubbish.
The lawmaker said both men were complicit in the squabbles that infected the party after the last election, but expressed optimism that the PDP would re-emerge as a strong and viable opposition.
Former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu, who trounced his closest rivals, PDP’s Atiku and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, in the 2023 poll and assumed office as president in May 2023, is seeking re-election in 2027 to complete the country’s eight-year unwritten rule on rotation of power between the two major regions of the country – the southern and northern regions.
Before Tinubu, Buhari, a retired military general from the North-West zone of the country, was in power between May 2015 and May 2023.
Ahead of the 2027 polls, talks about an inter-party alliance reached a climax on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, when opposition arrowhead Atiku, alongside Obi, ex-Senate president David Mark, ex-minister Rauf Aregbesola, ex-minister Rotimi Amaechi, ex-Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, amongst others, adopted the African Democratic Party (ADC) as the platform by the opposition coalition to oust incumbent Tinubu whose administration has been accused of mismanaging the economy, with all-time high inflation and unprecedented cost of living.
The coalition is banking on the numerical strength of the votes recorded by Atiku and Obi in the last poll.
In 2023, Atiku and Obi came second and third respectively with combined votes of over 12 million, more than four million above the total votes recorded by Tinubu who was declared the winner by electoral umpire INEC.
