Former Director General of the Voice of Nigeria, VoN, and Chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Dr Osita Okechukwu, has said Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s engagement of a Washington-based lobbying firm to enhance his international profile may not address the zoning convention, which he said is an albatross in the country.
Responding to journalists on the report that the former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2023 general election, Alhaji Abubakar, engaged Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C. – to enhance his international profile – a Fellow of the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, Okechukwu expressed concern that the strategy may not address the zoning convention at home.
He noted that while reputation management is a major tool in modern politics, it cannot substitute for resolving the lingering issue of his blatant refusal to accept the zoning convention of rotation of president from north to south and elsewhere.
“One holds Abubakar in high regard, especially given his longstanding political associations with my elder brother, Dubem Onyia, of blessed memory; however, it is pertinent to recognise that domestic political conventions like rotation of power cannot be effectively addressed through external image-building alone.
“Going by our local wisdom, it is illogical to go to Sokoto to look for what is in one’s Chokoto or Babaringa dress. Was it not because of the Zoning Convention that he stormed out of PDP in 2014?” he queried.
“Is it not because of the zoning convention that no Southern presidential aspirant contested in the PDP’s presidential primary in 2018, where Waziri Adamawa triumphed? Simply, the zoning convention in Atiku’s Babaringa was his main albatross in the 2023 presidential election, as it is today,” he said.
Okechukwu also observed that it is important to once again remind Atiku Abubakar’s handlers that the majority of Nigerians, since the advent of the 4th Republic in 1999, hold fast and are resolved that for fairness, brotherhood, inclusion, unity and the harmonious existence of our dear country, power should rotate from North to South and vice versa.
He further stressed that they should not gloss over the historical fact that, without the zoning convention, which Northern political stalwarts like flamboyant Abubakar Rimi, Adamu Ciroma, Umaru Shinkafi, and Dr Olusola Saraki obeyed, Atiku couldn’t have been vice president in 1999.
It is reported that the agreement is valued at $1.2 million, going by documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice and signed on March 9 and 10, 2026, by the firm’s managing partner, Karl Von Batten, and Nigerian politician Fabiyi Oladimeji, who represented Atiku.
“Ultimately, sustainable political acceptance is built on trust, inclusiveness, and respect for established conventions. These are the foundations upon which lasting leadership is achieved,” he noted.
Leave a Reply