Leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate for the upcoming election, Atiku Abubakar, are reportedly planning to enlist the support of presidential candidates from the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, and the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso, in order to work together to defeat the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Meanwhile, those considered by APC to be among the qualified persons for the position of a running mate are Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, both of whom are prominent northern Christians.
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While efforts are on to avoid a Muslim-Muslim ticket, the party is also said to be considering Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, who is a strong northerner, but a Muslim.
However, in PDP, it is believed that Obi and Kwankwaso’s defections could affect the fortunes of the party in the February 25, 2023, presidential election.
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Also, there are speculations that Obi’s exit will further split the votes of the South, which is the PDP’s stronghold, while Kwankwaso’s exit will have a similar effect in the North, especially Kano State, which has bloc votes. If allowed to happen, the party fears it will work in favour of the APC, which already has more states in the North.
It was gathered that Obi left the party due to the unfriendliness of one of the governors of the party in the South-South.
A former National Chairman of the PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, opined that result of the 2019 presidential election had shown that the PDP needed to get all the votes it could from all the states, especially northern states with higher numbers of voters.
He explained:
In Kano State, President (Muhammadu) Buhari won in all the 44 local government areas with 1.4 million votes, while Atiku got 391,593 votes. Though the incumbent governor of the state, Abdullahi Ganduje, won the governorship election on the platform of the APC in 2019, it was a tight race between his party and the PDP.
So, the PDP has prospects in the state, which is why it has to do what is necessary to get the maximum possible from the state.
Secondus added:
The 2019 governorship election results, which were a combination of the March 9 election and the March 23 rerun, showed the APC polled 1,033,695 votes, while the PDP scored 1,024,713 votes. With the above analysis, you will see that the PDP will need the cooperation of the two gentlemen to remain popular and win these states.
