Fielding Atiku as PDP candidate in 2023 was an error - Abba
Senate Minority Leader, Senator Abba Moro, has admitted that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) made a costly mistake by fielding former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as its 2023 presidential candidate.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, Moro said the party’s decision to jettison its zoning arrangement in 2022 and present a northern candidate to succeed a northern president contributed significantly to its defeat.
He said, “In 2022, the PDP in an attempt to wrest power from the APC, had actually thrown open the zoning arrangement of the party and that we were going to put our best foot forward. Eventually, like it happened, that decision backfired because people resisted the intention to get a northern candidate to succeed a northern president and so it backfired and PDP for part of that reason lost the election.”
The lawmaker said the outcome of the polls showed that Nigerians rejected the party’s decision to field a northerner, adding that the PDP had since reviewed its strategy and accepted that an error was made.
“So this time around, we’ve been reconciling, reviewing the strategy and reviewing what happened and majority of us, virtually all of us, agreed that a mistake was made in 2023 fielding a northern candidate,” Moro explained.
“This time around, in the spirit of unity, in the spirit of fairness and justice, PDP leaders decided to swallow their saliva and said, look, let’s take this thing to South, where majority of the people feel it should have been. As the election turned out, because Nigerian people spoke, definitely it was an error.”
Moro also described the PDP’s loss as a major setback, saying the party regretted the decision. “We lost a very monumental election in a disastrous manner,” he said.
His remarks come shortly after the PDP zoned its 2027 presidential ticket to the South, a move party leaders say is aimed at ensuring fairness and unity within its ranks.