Senator Abba Moro, the Senate Minority Leader, has conceded that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) made an expensive error by choosing former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as its 2023 presidential candidate.
Moro told Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday that the party’s choice to abandon its zoning scheme in 2022 and pitch a northern candidate to succeed a northern president had a big role in 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 we were going to put our best foot forward.
“Eventually, as 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, in part for that reason, lost the election.”
Moro 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.
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“So this time around, we’ve been reconciling, reviewing the strategy and reviewing what happened, and the majority of us, virtually all of us, agreed that a mistake was made in 2023 in 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 the South, where the 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 regarded the party’s defeat as a significant setback, saying the party regretted its decision. “We lost a very monumental election in a disastrous manner,” according to him.
His comments came shortly after the PDP designated its 2027 presidential ticket to the South, a move that party leaders claim is intended to ensure fairness and harmony among its ranks.
