Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has asked northerners to vote for him in 2023, and not for a “Yoruba or Igbo candidate”.

“I think what an average northerner needs is somebody from the north who understands other parts of Nigeria and who has been able to build bridges across the country. That is what the north needs,” Mr Abubakar said in a now viral video.

A former vice president between 1999 to 2007, Mr Abubakar added that, “It (Northern Nigeria) doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate or an Igbo candidate. This is what the northerners need. So I believe I stand before you as a pan-Nigerian of Northern origin.”

Mr Abubakar prides himself as a unifier. However, this charge that the north must vote a northerner goes contrary to the public image of a unifier that he’s portrayed over the years. 

Contrary to Mr Abubakar’s divisive ethnic and regional campaign, the 2023 flagbearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, continues to charge Nigerians to vote based on competence and capacity and not by regional, religious or ethnic sentiments.

At 75, Mr Abubakar will contest the 2023 presidential election against several contestants, including candidates of the All Progressives Congress and the Labour Party, Bola Tinubu and Mr Obi respectively, who are of southern extraction.

Mr Abubakar has since 1993 sought five times and failed to be Nigeria’s president; failing at party primary level three times and twice in the main elections.