ABUJA, Nigeria — Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal has said Atiku Abubakar asked him to persuade Peter Obi to become his running mate for the 2027 presidential election.
Lawal said the proposed arrangement would have placed Obi on the African Democratic Congress ticket as Atiku’s vice-presidential candidate and formed part of a broader plan involving a proposed constitutional amendment for a single six-year presidential term.
According to Lawal, Atiku was expected to serve an initial four-year term with Obi as vice president, during which the constitutional change would be pursued, before Obi later benefiting from the proposed single-term structure.
Lawal said he personally conveyed the proposal to Obi, but that the former Anambra State governor was not interested.
On Monday, September 28, 2026, Lawal’s account added a new layer to continuing questions over failed opposition talks ahead of the 2027 election.
Neither Atiku nor the ADC had publicly confirmed Lawal’s account at the time the report was published.
Obi had earlier given a different version while speaking about possible opposition alliances ahead of the 2027 election.
When asked whether he had rejected an offer to serve as Atiku’s running mate, Obi said no such proposal had been made to him.
He also indicated that any future alliance would have to involve the political parties themselves, rather than being reduced to a private arrangement between individuals.
The conflicting accounts leave unresolved whether a discussion took place in the form Lawal described, or whether Obi did not regard it as a formal vice-presidential offer.
The latest claim comes after the opposition coalition that once brought together Atiku, Obi, and other political figures broke apart ahead of the next presidential race.
Obi is now the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, while Atiku is the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress.
The two men were previously on the same presidential ticket in the 2019 election, when Obi ran as Atiku’s vice-presidential candidate under the Peoples Democratic Party.
Lawal joined the NDC on September 22 and endorsed the Obi-Rabiu Kwankwaso ticket.
He had earlier left the ADC in June after alleging that the party’s presidential primary had been manipulated in Atiku’s favour, an allegation that was disputed.
His latest remarks offer another account of the negotiations that preceded the breakdown of the earlier opposition alignment.
But the central assertion that Atiku asked Lawal to offer Obi the vice-presidential slot under a single-term arrangement remains publicly uncorroborated by Atiku or the ADC.
