The Presidency on Sunday warned against attempts to truncate the South’s eight-year tenure in the nation’s rotational presidency arrangement, insisting that the North must honour the existing understanding to preserve national unity, political stability and mutual trust.

It argued that sacrificing the longstanding power-sharing principle to accommodate any individual’s presidential ambition would undermine the spirit of reciprocity that has helped sustain Nigeria’s democracy since 1999.

Personal Assistant to the President on Radio and Broadcast, Office of the Vice President, Hajya Rahma Abdulmajid, made the statement on Sunday about the Grand Inauguration and Strategic Media Awards Ceremony of Matan Arewa 4 Tinubu Again (MATA) in Kano.

Abdulmajid, who made a veiled reference to former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, maintained that the North’s political interests would be better protected by respecting the rotational arrangement than pursuing an immediate return to power.

She described the North-South power-sharing understanding as a reciprocal political compact designed to guarantee fairness, inclusion and national stability.

According to her, the agreement, reached by political leaders during the transition from military rule in 1998, helped address the divisions created by the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

She recalled that prominent Northern and Southern leaders, including Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Dr Chuba Okadigbo, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Dr Alex Ekwueme and Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, participated in the discussions that shaped the understanding.

Abdulmajid also claimed that Atiku attended the historic Kaduna meeting, a position she said the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, had corroborated.

“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,” she said.

Tracing the country’s leadership transitions, Abdulmajid noted that former President Olusegun Obasanjo governed from 1999 to 2007 before power shifted North with the election of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

She explained that Yar’Adua’s death in 2010 interrupted the North’s tenure, with his Southern deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, completing the administration and subsequently winning the 2011 presidential election.

According to her, the North’s demand for power to return in 2015 was eventually realised through the election of Muhammadu Buhari, who served two terms between 2015 and 2023.

She maintained that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s emergence in 2023 restored the rotational sequence, making his re-election in 2027 consistent with the same principle Northern political leaders previously defended.

“The agreement is reciprocal; it is a two-way street. The North has already taken its full benefit after eight solid years under Buhari. You cannot eat your cake and still demand another man’s cake”, she declared.

Abdulmajid recalled Tinubu’s role in mobilising support for Buhari’s election in 2015, arguing that the same commitment to political fairness should now guide Northern leaders in supporting his second-term ambition.

She accused Atiku of applying different standards to the zoning arrangement depending on whether it favoured his presidential aspirations.

“Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar tells us zoning is ‘self-defeating.’ But he participated in and benefited from zoned arrangements in 2015 and 2019 when they favoured his ambition!

“When rotation opened the door for him, it was acceptable. When it stands in his way, it becomes ‘intellectually dishonest’”, she said.

Questioning the justification for abandoning the arrangement, she added: “Shall we sacrifice Nigeria’s stability for one man’s ambition? The North’s genuine interest is not served by that; the North’s interest is stable inclusion.

“The guarantee that power will return to you only lives if we honour the compact today”.

She urged Northern voters to regard Tinubu’s re-election as a matter of political honour and national stability rather than sectional competition.

“This is for our honour. This is for reciprocity. This is for the enduring stability and peaceful coexistence of our great nation.

“That is exactly what the re-election of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for a second term stands for”, she said.

Also speaking, Kano State Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf, warned that reversing the existing power rotation arrangement would portray the North as unwilling to respect political agreements.

The governor, represented by his Director-General of Media and Publicity, Sunusi Bature Dawakin Tofa, maintained that fairness, inclusivity and mutual respect remained indispensable to Nigeria’s unity.

He urged Northern political stakeholders to uphold the existing understanding by supporting Tinubu’s re-election in 2027.

Former Jigawa State Governor and immediate past Minister of Defence, Mohammad Abubakar Badaru, also backed the President’s second-term bid, arguing that the North had benefited substantially from the administration’s infrastructure investments.

Badaru maintained that the Tinubu administration had delivered more development projects to the North than to any other region.

He cited completed road projects, including the 88-kilometre Zuba-Jere and 81-kilometre Abuja-Kaduna sections of the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway, commissioned in October 2026.

Others, he said, included the 77-kilometre Kaduna-Pambeguwa road, the Yakasai-Badume-Damargu-Marken Zalli roads in Kano and the Jimeta Bridge in Yola.

On healthcare, the former minister listed the completed Gadon Kaya Primary Healthcare Centre in Kano, three polio emergency centres in Katsina, Kano and Sokoto, and a pharmacy laboratory at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria.

He also mentioned the 50-bed mental health centre at the University of Maiduguri, an infertility centre at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi, and ongoing improvements at Bichi General Hospital.

Badaru further identified the deployment of 79 Compressed Natural Gas-powered ambulances as part of the administration’s efforts to strengthen healthcare delivery.

He maintained that the projects demonstrated the administration’s commitment to Northern development and provided additional justification for the region to support Tinubu’s second-term ambition. (The Nation)