Keyamo: Atiku has no base outside PDP, wants to ride on Obi’s cult appeal

Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development, says Atiku Abubakar cannot win the 2027 presidential election even with Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s 2023 flag bearer, as running mate.

Keyamo spoke on Prime Time, an Arise Television programme, on Monday.

He said Atiku no longer commands the political support he enjoyed in the last election, as he has since left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the platform on which he garnered nearly 7 million votes in 2023.

Speaking on the prospects of an Atiku–Obi alliance ahead of the next general election, Keyamo said the coalition is being proposed with the hope of combining the 6,984,520 votes Atiku secured in 2023 and the 6,101,533 votes polled by Obi to surpass President Bola Tinubu’s winning tally of 8,794,726.

“If you make Atiku the presidential candidate and Obi the vice-presidential candidate, what they are trying to do is merge those two votes to surpass our 8.9 million votes. But they don’t understand that the dynamics have changed,” Keyamo said.

“First of all, Atiku does not possess that 6.9 million votes. Obi is more of a cult personality than Atiku, so Atiku cannot take that 6.9 million votes away from PDP. It was the PDP structure that gave him that vote.”

Keyamo, who served as the spokesperson for the Tinubu-Shettima presidential campaign in 2023, noted that Atiku’s departure from the PDP has stripped him of the support base that powered his last electoral outing.

“The structures of PDP that delivered those votes are intact — he (Atiku) left them behind. Those structures did not follow him,” Keyamo said.

“I will give him one million votes out of those 6.9 million. The rest are PDP votes. The governors, senators, house of representatives members — he didn’t take one away, except for that Sokoto governor following him.”

There has been speculation that Atiku, now a member of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), could be seeking to form a strategic alliance with Obi’s Labour Party faction ahead of the 2027 general election.

But Keyamo dismissed the potential alliance as political sleight of hand, adding that any arrangement that makes Obi a running mate to Atiku would be an attempt to tap into his popularity.

“Once Obi is his deputy, it would look like he’s hiding behind one finger because they are trying to get Obi’s vote without giving him the ticket,” he said.

“ADC is Atiku’s party, the earlier Obi knows that, the better.”

Obi, a former Anambra governor, has declared his intention to run for president again in 2027.

Atiku has not made a formal declaration but has hinted at continued involvement in the opposition’s efforts to unseat the All Progressives Congress (APC).