The decision of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to zone the 2027 presidential ticket to the South, while retaining the party’s National Chairmanship in the North, has been described as a clear vindication of the stance earlier taken by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike, and the G-5 governors in 2022.
Reacting to the development, Wike’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media, Lere Olayinka, said the latest resolution of the NEC has proven that the position of his principal and other aggrieved PDP leaders ahead of the 2023 elections was correct.
“Now that the party has realised its mistake of not listening to Wike and the G-5 in 2022, and has chosen to do what they said three years later, have they not been vindicated?” Olayinka asked in a statement on Tuesday.
He recalled that in the build-up to the 2023 general elections, Wike and the G-5 governors had insisted that the PDP could not retain both its presidential candidate and National Chairman in the same geopolitical zone.
“At that time, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, from the North, had emerged as the presidential candidate of the party,” Olayinka said. “The G-5 argued that Senator Iyorchia Ayu, who was also from the North and then serving as National Chairman, should resign to allow the South produce the chairman, in the spirit of fairness and balance.”
According to him, Wike and his allies repeatedly warned that disregarding this principle would cost the PDP at the polls. However, Ayu refused to step aside, a decision that enjoyed the backing of Atiku and his loyalists.
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“The aftermath was the electoral misfortune the PDP suffered in 2023, followed by internal instability after the elections,” Olayinka said.
He stressed that the NEC’s decision last week to zone the chairmanship to the North while reserving the presidential ticket for the South in 2027 was exactly what Wike and the G-5 had demanded in 2022.
“Today, the PDP has come back to eat its own words,” Olayinka declared. “Wike simply said, take the chairmanship to the South if you want to gain the presidency, but they insisted on taking both, and the party lost. Now, three years later, they are correcting the mistake.”
The aide, however, questioned whether the latest zoning arrangement would not already be too late, noting that equity in power rotation would ideally require the South to complete eight years in power before the presidency reverts to the North in 2031.
“Sadly, they know the truth. They are trying to fix what they broke, but the reality is that zoning will only be justified if the South takes a full turn of eight years. Otherwise, the mistake of 2022 will continue to haunt the party,” Olayinka added.
