Edo State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Prince Kassim Afegbua, has warned former Vice President Atiku and his fellow party man, Ken Imasuagbon, against attempts to dismantle Nigeria’s North-South power rotation arrangement, describing their presidential bid as a threat to the country’s political stability.
Afegbua, who also serves as a member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, made the remarks in an article titled, Ken Imasuagbon’s Uncharitable Interview, whily reacting to Imasuagbon’s appearance on Channels Television on Friday.
Imasuagbon, a member of the African Democratic Congress, had during the
defended Atiku’s 2027 presidential ambition, condemned the Federal High Court judgment that voided the party’s candidate nomination process, and predicted that President Bola Tinubu would lose the election over security failures.
But Afegbua focused his response on Imasuagbon’s earlier rejection of the zoning principle. In September, Imasuagbon had urged southern voters to back Atiku, asking whether rotation is written in the constitution.
“Is rotation written in the constitution? We should be talking about rotating hunger to food, bad schools to good schools. I don’t care where Nigeria’s president comes from; what matters is a president who can fix Nigeria,” Imasuagbon had said.
Afegbua said such comments showed that Imasuagbon and Atiku were determined to rupture the North-South arrangement that has underpinned the country’s political balance.
He accused Imasuagbon of “verbal diarrhea” and of trying to sell a “poisoned chalice” of a candidate who “can at best disrupt the political stability between the North and the South.”
“There has to be a conscious and deliberate effort to sustain the North-South arrangement in terms of rotation of the presidential contest,” Afegbua said.
He described Imasuagbon and Atiku as “birds of similar plumage,” noting that both men are among the longest-serving political contestants in Nigeria’s electoral history, with Imasuagbon having contested the governorship six times without success and Atiku running for president “for the umpteenth time.”
Afegbua also dismissed Imasuagbon’s claims about the state of roads in Edo State. Imasuagbon had said travelling from Ewohinmi to Benin City takes five hours, a claim Afegbua rejected as a “black lie,” insisting the journey takes about one hour.
“I presume he meant if he was traveling by swimming in alcohol,” Afegbua said.
He defended Governor Monday Okpebholo’s road projects across Edo Central and the wider state, describing the network as second to none in the state’s history.
On the presidential race, Afegbua portrayed Atiku as an “economic buccaneer and predator” desperate to return to a “subsidy regime of rot, corruption, and wholesale embezzlement,” while crediting Tinubu’s reforms with moving Nigeria “from actionable reforms to prosperity.”
He said that with Imasuagbon campaigning for Atiku, Tinubu’s re-election bid is “a breeze,” describing both men as “long-time rejects.”
Imasuagbon had said during the interview that he would appeal the court ruling and insisted Atiku “will be on the ballot and will win.”
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