From Obasanjo and Tinubu camps to Atiku’s war room, by Emmanuel Aziken

Atiku Abubakar’s choice of leaders for his 2027 presidential campaign tells a larger story than the announcement of a campaign council. Its chairman, Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, was once firmly identified with Olusegun Obasanjo. Its deputy chairman, Nasir El-Rufai, served on a panel that examined allegations against Atiku during his bitter struggle with Obasanjo. Both later moved through the political camp that brought Bola Tinubu to power. Now they are to help Atiku defeat him.

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The appointment of Ibrahim-Imam is an illustration of how far Nigeria’s political relationships can travel. At the start of the Fourth Republic, Obasanjo made him presidential liaison officer to the Senate. It was a delicate assignment: relations between the presidency and the legislature were already fraught. Ibrahim-Imam was accused of involvement in moves against Senate President Chuba Okadigbo and declared unwelcome at the National Assembly. The accusation did not establish his guilt, but it reinforced his reputation as an unwavering Obasanjo man.

That association carries particular irony for Atiku. His partnership with Obasanjo ended in one of the Fourth Republic’s most enduring political feuds. Only this year, the former president again described choosing Atiku as his vice-president as a mistake. One of the politicians who built his early career close to Obasanjo is now entrusted with directing Atiku’s bid for the office they once occupied together.

Ibrahim-Imam’s own ambition was to govern Borno State. He won the Peoples Democratic Party ticket in 2003, but Ali Modu Sheriff—“SAS” to his political followers—defeated him on the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party platform. Ibrahim-Imam tried again in 2007. Sheriff beat him again and completed two terms as governor. For an Obasanjo loyalist flying the president’s party flag, the double defeat was a bruising lesson in the limits of presidential proximity.

There have long been suggestions that Sheriff enjoyed a separate relationship with Obasanjo through his father, who was said to have carried out contracts during Obasanjo’s military administration. Such accounts help explain the intrigue that surrounded the Borno contests. They do not prove that Obasanjo secretly worked against Ibrahim-Imam. The electoral record is clear enough: twice the president’s party candidate confronted Sheriff; twice he lost.

Thereafter, Kashim remained in the political background from 2007 for more than a decade. It is alleged that in that period he quietly formed an alliance with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and that it was on that basis he received one of the few appointments President Muhammadu Buhari gifted to Tinubu. It was no small job. The chairmanship of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, was one of the juiciest positions on offer during the Buhari years.

Kashim was among those considered for running mate to Tinubu in the run-up to the 2023 election, but he lost out to his fellow Borno man and namesake, Senator Kashim Shettima. There were insinuations that he was not happy with it. Tinubu tried to mollify him by nominating his 25-year-old son as chairman of FERMA, but that nomination drew a national outcry and was withdrawn. For whatever reason, Kashim then withdrew from the Tinubu space and subsequently emerged in the ranks of the opposition, and then in Atiku’s ADC. El-Rufai’s history with Atiku is more personal. In the early Obasanjo years, he headed the Bureau of Public Enterprises under a privatisation programme supervised by Atiku as vice-president. They had worked together before becoming adversaries.

The break became consequential during the Petroleum Technology Development Fund affair. In 2006, Obasanjo established an administrative panel to review allegations involving Atiku.

When the Obasanjo government exited and he fell out with the successor, he quickly pitched camp with Muhammadu Buhari and reinvented himself as a son of the former military head of state.

He won the governorship of Kaduna State on the coattails of the Buhari phenomenon in 2015 and served out two terms of what many still call one of the most divisive administrations in the history of the state. At the peak of Buhari’s power, and with Tinubu in seeming decline, El-Rufai took up tirades against Tinubu and at one point came to Lagos to lecture political actors on how to overthrow political godfathers.

Shockingly, by 2022, El-Rufai was among the northern APC governors backing a southern successor to Buhari. He then supported Tinubu’s candidacy against Atiku in 2023.

A place in Tinubu’s government appeared to follow. Tinubu nominated El-Rufai as a minister, and El-Rufai spoke of plans for the power sector. The Senate withheld his confirmation, citing security clearance. El-Rufai later said Tinubu had changed his mind about appointing him. The contents of the cited security concerns were not publicly settled, and the competing accounts offer no firm basis for claiming who engineered his exclusion. The partnership ended; El-Rufai moved into opposition politics.

There is a further complication for Atiku’s campaign. El-Rufai remains in custody while facing trial over alleged money laundering and conversion of public property. Those allegations are unproven. His circumstances nevertheless raise a practical question about how a deputy chairman can help coordinate a national campaign while unable to move freely.

Atiku’s team calls its structure lean: Senator Austin Akobundu will manage campaign operations through six directorates and 30 directors. Its two political leaders bring formidable experience, along with the baggage of the governments and rivalries that shaped them. The appointments show Atiku’s willingness to reconcile with old opponents. The test will be whether Ibrahim-Imam and El-Rufai can offer voters a convincing reason for their new alliance—and a governing purpose that reaches beyond removing Tinubu.