A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senate Minority Leader, Senator Abba Moro has admitted that the party erred by fielding former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as its presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, describing the decision as an error that weakened the opposition’s chances.
Moro, speaking during Tuesday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today, said the PDP took the right step by zoning its 2027 presidential ticket to the South.
At the conclusion of its 102nd National Executive Committee meeting, the PDP resolved to zone its 2027 presidential ticket to the South while allowing the North to retain the position of National Chairman.
Moro disclosed that party leaders reached a unanimous consensus that the 2027 presidential ticket should be allocated to the South.
He stated, “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.
“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.
“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 fielding Atiku was an error.”
Moro further described the PDP’s defeat as a significant setback, noting that the party deeply regretted the choice it made.
“We lost a very monumental election in a disastrous manner,” he said.
