Bode George & Atiku 

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APeoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain and member of the Board of Trustees (BoT), Chief Bode George, has declared that the PDP would cease to exist if former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is handed the party’s 2027 presidential ticket.

Speaking during an interview on Channels Television on Monday, the elder statesman didn’t mince his words.

“If he (Atiku) picks it (PDP’s ticket), that is the end of this party,” George said. “If he picks it by manipulation, which was what was done the last time, we will not accept it.”

The statement is a huge blow to Atiku, who has been in an unrelenting quest for the presidency for over three decades.

Having contested and lost six times under different political platforms, Atiku was the PDP’s flagbearer in 2023, coming second to President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

But in a country reeling from economic collapse, all-time high inflation, and historic levels of hardship, Atiku recently launched a new coalition to unseat Tinubu.

On March 20, 2025, he unveiled an alliance alongside Labour Party’s Peter Obi, ex-Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, and others, presenting what he called a “third force.”

But Bode George isn’t buying it.

He praised the PDP governors for distancing themselves from the coalition and slammed Atiku for failing to show true party leadership during PDP’s internal crises.

“No, if he is the leader of the party, he would have waded into it (the crisis),” George said.

“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.”

Asked whether Atiku had any chance of securing the party’s ticket in 2027, George was blunt.

“He cannot be. This is what I am saying. There was eight years in the north, there should be eight years in the south. That is the dictate, that is the doctrine of the PDP.”

Citing the party’s constitution, he argued that rotational presidency remains a foundational principle of the PDP.

“Section 7, Sub-section 3C of our constitution states that once the presidential candidate has been in the South for eight years, it goes to the North—and vice versa. Is Atiku from the South-West, South-South or South-East?”

In a rare moment of bipartisan honesty, the Lagos-born politician also dismissed any hope for a second term for Bola Tinubu, his kinsman.

“I don’t want Tinubu again either. But I want the PDP to win with a southern candidate. Not Atiku. He can go to any party, it’s his constitutional right. But not here, not again.”

Bode George’s comments add to the internal strife and power struggle tearing at the seams of Nigeria’s opposition party.

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