Not that it was under much doubt, but there’s a certain inevitability that by 2027, Nigeria’s perennial presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar will once again be on the ballot paper when the citizenry decides in the country’s eighth general election since the return of democracy in 1999. About two years after his fifth consecutive unsuccessful shot at the country’s apex public office, the former Vice President has set the wheels in motion for another shot, taking a decisive step by resigning from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the very party of which he is a founding member.

“I find it necessary to part ways due to the current trajectory the Party has taken, which I believe diverges from the foundational principles we stood for,” Atiku’s resignation letter dated July 14 read. “It is with a heavy heart that I resign, recognising the irreconcilable differences that have emerged.”

It’s a familiar and hardly suprising move from Atiku, considering the PDP has spent the better part of recent years imploding under its own weight, with a wave of deflection and unchecked insubordination that has crippled its national presence against the increasingly dominant rulling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is looking to consolidate its power grip after 10 years of ruling.

Now with the African Democratic Congress (ADC), a rejuvenated party that’s tilling its ground to accommodate some of the country’s political heavyweights who share a common goal of “saving Nigeria’s democracy and stopping it from becoming a one-party state,” it wouldn’t be an overreaching permutation to say Atiku has a better chance with this arrangement than with the present-day PDP. He’s, after all, not given any indication of giving up his pursuit until he breasts the tape. So, why not charge again with his best foot while he’s still seen as relevant?

The Nigerian politician Atiku Abubakar is, by virtually all available metrics, one with a career-long ambition of ruling the country. Since he relinquished his victory as Adamawa State Governor in 1999 to take up a bigger and more delicate task as Olusegun Obasanjo’s running mate in that year’s presidential election, one could tell what direction his intentions lay. And when, four years later, he nearly staged an audacious attempt to contest against his principal for the top seat, the writing was even clearer.

Though the consequence of his fallout with President Obasanjo meant he would be sidelined for the better part of their second term and his influence in the PDP would wane, there was no stopping his ambition. He defected to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to contest the 2007 presidential election, which he lost to the PDP’s Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. In 2011, Atiku returned to the PDP for another shot but lost the party’s presidential ticket to then-incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, who emerged victorious at the general elections. 

Falling behind President Jonathan in PDP’s pecking order meant Atiku had to find another platform for his ambition in the 2015 polls, and that he did with the newly formed APC. However, he eventually lost the party’s primaries to late Muhammadu Buhari, who ultimately beat the PDP’s Jonathan to the presidency. Back to the PDP ahead of the 2019 election, Atiku ran as the party’s presidential standard bearer for both the 2019 and 2023 elections, which he lost to Buhari and Tinubu respectively. 

Now leading a coalition force under the ADC against the ruling APC, alongside other prominent opposition political figures like Labour Party’s Peter Obi, ex-Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, and former Senate President David Mark, Atiku is poised to contest for the presidency in 2027, optics be damned. 

Nigeria’s political scene is replete with politicians who are unrelenting in their pursuit of power, and there have been tangible instances of them eventually reaping the fruits of their relentlessness. For instance, President Buhari recorded three failed attempts (2003, 2007, 2011) before eventually emerging victorious in 2015, defeating Jonathan in what was the first electoral loss of an incumbent president in Nigerian history. Buhari’s victory was largely a result of the substantial goodwill he courted as an anti-corruption and pro-security candidate, bolstered by his military background and seemingly modest lifestyle.

But where Buhari’s eventual rise was carried by a convergence of these factors and the largely public discontent of the incumbent at the time, Atiku, over the years, has hardly sold anything more than his personal insistence. His staying power is not buoyed by widespread love or populist fervour, but by political resilience and strategic alignment.

Even more, there is the absence of a convincing ideology or the kind of personality-driven politics that, at the very least, offered a rallying point for many of the country’s past presidents, whose motives, as we’d eventually see, leaned towards self-interest than genuine service. With Atiku’s ever-shifting affiliations, though each backed by some rationale, one is left wondering what, if anything, he ultimately stands for beyond the desire to occupy Aso Rock.

That he is still seen as a viable candidate, three decades after his first rodeo is as much a commentary on the man as it is on the system that continues to accommodate him.

So come 2027, when the campaign posters go up again, when the rallies begin, and promises ensue as electorates decide the fate of Nigeria, the candidacy of an 81-year-old Atiku Abubakar is more or less guaranteed. Mainly because he’s still here, still trying, and still finding a system that welcomes his ambition. And maybe, in this strange Nigerian democracy, that is all it takes.