A member of the Board of Trustees of Nigeria’s main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olabode George, said the 2022 presidential convention of the party was manipulated, blaming it for the crisis that almost tore the party apart.
The PDP held its Special National Convention in Abuja in 2022, where delegates elected the party’s presidential candidate for the 2023 election.
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In an interview on AIT on Thursday, Mr George said the exercise was “manipulated.” He thanked the PDP Governors Forum for resolving the crisis, which he said was triggered by the “manipulated convention.”
Background
The PDP is consolidating on the recent peace achieved by the party following a successful National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, where it zoned different offices in the party.
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At the meeting, the party announced that the position of the national chairmanship will remain in the north, while its presidential ticket, the essence of the crisis that led to the exodus of bigwigs, including governors and lawmakers from the party, is zoned to the south.
Although many argued as unconstitutional, Nigeria’s two major political parties, APC and PDP, appeared to have, by convention, adopted a rotational presidency – zoning political offices, particularly the presidency between the north and south.
For instance, the then-ruling PDP had President Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner, from 1999 to 2007. He was succeeded by Umaru Yar’ Adua, a northerner who died in office, leaving his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, to complete his tenure.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari (now late), a northerner and an APC member, was elected in 2015 and served through 2023.
While the 2022 APC primary produced Bola Tinubu, a southerner, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a northerner, emerged as the PDP candidate, prompting a backlash from then-Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, who came second at the primary.
Mr Wike and his four other colleagues, including then-Governors Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu and Samuel Ortom of Benue state, broke ranks with the party and supported southern candidates, arguing that it was the turn of the south to produce the president.
The crisis that followed tore the PDP apart until it was recently resolved through efforts led by the PDP governors.
‘Absolutely manipulated’
“The last presidential convention (primary) we had was absolutely manipulated,” Mr George, a former national vice chairperson of the PDP, said, blaming it for the party crisis.
“There are some people who are not happy because the PDP said the south would produce the next presidential candidate,” Mr George said, tracing zoning to the party’s founding fathers, including former Vice President Alex Ekwueme.
“They (the founding fathers) said the first republic collapsed because of the kind of system that was run – majority tribes had their way; minority tribes were mere onlookers, and we could not continue like that.”
Mr George said that, as a result, the founding fathers devised a system to accommodate every Nigerian by dividing the country into six geopolitical zones and created six top political positions, including the president, vice president, party national chairperson, senate president, and speaker of the House of Representatives, and spread them across the six zones.
“And after every eight years, all the ones in the north would come to the south and vice versa, and Section 7 (3) c of our constitution is explicit; there shall be zoning and rotation of elected offices and party offices.”
He explained why he said the 2022 PDP national convention was manipulated.
“Some of us told them that this is not the way it should be. Mr Buhari ran Nigeria for eight years; the next president must also come from the south. That is what was invented to bring a sense of belonging to this country; otherwise, there would be perpetual breakdown of law.
“Let’s do it the way it should be done because the next four years, the presidency remains in the south. After 2031, it goes back to the north. But when you want to shortchange it, you manipulate the process during that convention, which was what created this mess,” he stressed.
Mr George said the product of the convention – the presidential candidate and the national chairperson of the party coming from the north “was illegal”, a situation Mr Wike and his allies protested before resorting to support southern presidential candidates.
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Mr George expressed happiness that the governors of the party have been able to resolve “the major madness” that they went through.
“That route was outright madness. I am happy we have solved that – chairmanship remains in the north, presidency in the south until 2031,” he stressed.
On the internal discipline within the party, particularly about members of the party who have endorsed President Tinubu for a second term, Mr George said, henceforth any member who does that will be sanctioned in line with the guidelines of the party.
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