Unlike in 2019 when the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, ceded its Presidential ticket to the North, there is no consensus yet as to which of the zones will produce the party’s flag bearer in the 2023 presidential election.
This comes against the backdrop of insistence by powerful members of the party on the emergence of president of Southern extraction.
It was reported that Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, his Akwa Ibom State counterpart, Udom Emmanuel, and former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, are some of the PDP chieftains bent on having the leadership of the party look in the direction of the South in 2023.
It would be recalled that the National Executive Committee, NEC at its 89th meeting in February 2020, constituted a 14-man committee to review reasons the party lost the 2019 Presidential election and was subsequently tasked to recommend to the party how to avert a recurrence in future elections.
Although the Bala-Mohammed Committee recommended to the leadership of the party that the presidential ticket be made open to all six geo-political zones; PDP governors from the South are rooting for the zone to produce a candidate that will slug it out with the All Progressives Congress in 2023.
It was gathered that Governor Wike had been reaching out to other PDP governors from the North on the need to reciprocate the support of the South as demonstrated in the race to the Port Harcourt Presidential convention in 2018.
The 2018 convention, which produced Atiku as the flag bearer had the Rivers State governor openly rooting for his Sokoto State counterpart, Aminu Tambuwal, who finished second behind Atiku.
From the moment the former Vice President emerged winner, Wike queued behind him, urging party members to work together in the interest of the party.
A senior aide to the governor who does not want his name in print, told Vanguard in a telephone conversation yesterday that: “Governor Wike was preaching fairness, equity and justice.
‘’But beyond that, he is making a solid case for the South because in 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari would have completed his second tenure and it does not make sense to push out another Northerner regardless of the party, to succeed him.
‘’This is why His Excellency wants the party to look at the South because we have leaders with the requisite competence to turn the fortune of this country around.”
Only recently, Atiku was said to have met with Wike on his presidential bid only for the Rivers State governor to tell the Wazirin Adamawa to wait until the leadership of the party took a position on zoning.
Governor Wike, Vanguard gathered, also urged the former Vice President to be prepared to support a Southern candidate should the leadership of the party decides to go South in 2023. It is not certain if Atiku gave his word on possible support for a southern candidate or not.
An indication that the South is unlikely to settle for anything other than the presidency this time emerged last week when a former Commissioner of Information in Edo State and spokesman of Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign Organization, Kassim Afegbua, chided the former Vice President’s over his renewed interest in the race and urged him to take a seat in political retirement.
However, in an exclusive chat with Vanguard, Segun Sowunmi, a member of PDP and spokesperson to Atiku, said if the PDP was desirous of winning the Presidency, it should settle for no other candidate but the former Vice President, saying he had the wherewithal and experience required to bail the country out of its current woes.
“Atiku understands how to run and work democracy. Atiku understands how to manage power, Atiku understands and had gone through the rigours of how administrative civil service procedures ought to work and should work.
‘’Atiku understands how to bring deliberate steps and actions to create big ripple effects that can impact an economy and make life far more abundant for the people. And you must be persuaded by the fact that but for Obasanjo/Atiku years, Nigeria doesn’t seem to have had any major high points on the overall composite assessment of how life has been in the democracy.
‘’Anybody can claim that he is in charge but the truth of the matter is that some of the players of that era know what the Vice President Atiku Abubakar contributed and brought to the table,” he said.
