Senate Minority Leader, Senator Abba Moro, has admitted that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) made a grave mistake by fielding former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as its presidential candidate in the 2023 elections.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday,August 26, Moro said the decision to abandon the party’s long-standing zoning arrangement and present a northern candidate to succeed a northern president was a costly error that contributed significantly to the party’s defeat.
“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,” he said.
According to Moro, Nigerians rejected the PDP’s decision to field a northern candidate, and the party has since reviewed its strategy and acknowledged its mistake. “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,” he explained.
He further noted that in the spirit of unity and fairness, the PDP had resolved to shift its 2027 presidential ticket to the South. “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,” he said.
Reflecting on the party’s loss, Moro described it as a painful setback. “We lost a very monumental election in a disastrous manner,” he lamented.
His comments come shortly after the PDP officially zoned its 2027 presidential ticket to the South, in a move party leaders say is aimed at rebuilding trust, ensuring fairness, and restoring unity within its ranks.