Bloody Commotion!!! PDP Explodes, Sends BAD Signal, May Expel Goodluck Jonathan From Party
Crisis tearing the PDP apart is now being linked to the failure of former President, Goodluck Jonathan.
Also Speaking, a PDP Chieftain, Mohammed Haliru, said the party lost, because it abandoned its zoning arrangement and adopted the then incumbent Goodluck Jonathan.
The leadership crisis tearing the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, apart is now being linked to the failure of former President, Goodluck Jonathan, to allow the party to field a Northerner as its Presidential candidate in 2015 general election.
Recall, that the once self-acclaimed biggest party in Africa has not known peace since then, especially with Senator Ahmed Makarfi and former Borno State Governor, Ali Modu-Sheriff, locked in a fierce battle for the National Chairmanship position.
Reviewing the situation in an interview, on Friday, Makarfi was confident that the party would have won the 2015 Presidential election, had it fielded a Northern candidate.
Makarfi, opined that the ‘gang up’ against the PDP in the North, would not have arisen, if the party had presented a Northern candidate.
He said: “We would have won the 2015 Presidential election straight away with a Northern candidate.
“The reason is that, it would have been impossible to make an issue out of this North, South thing. We would have broken the North’s gang up, so to say, against the PDP.
“Again, we became too comfortable. A little bit of arrogance sometimes. We were not communicating well with the people. Because we were not communicating well, we failed to get what the people were saying, and of course, that made it easier for propaganda to be used against us. And that propaganda went deep that we couldn’t do anything again.”
Also Speaking, a PDP Chieftain, Mohammed Haliru, said the party lost, because it abandoned its zoning arrangement and adopted the then incumbent Goodluck Jonathan.
Haliru disclosed that the North felt short-changed in 2015, when the party put Jonathan forward as its candidate for the election.
Haliru said that the unfinished first term of the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua, was rightly completed by Jonathan, as specified by the 1999 Constitution, “but since the two terms were meant for the North, the party ought to have fielded a Northern candidate to complete the second term (from 2011-2015).”
He said: “Yar’Adua was not there to contest for second term, so you cannot say the second term was a Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket. It was only the first term that was Yar’Adua/Jonathan, which the Constitution provided for.
“But the election of 2011, which Jonathan contested and won, should have been contested by another candidate from the North”.
“We lost because we left the people behind on zoning and rotation. We said regardless of which part of the country you come from, you should know that you have the chance to contest for the Presidency.
“Out of arrogance, the leadership abandoned principles, and the people feeling abandoned, reacted the way they reacted. So, I am not surprised. It was the abandonment of the principle of zoning that led the people to abandon the party”.
The ex-party Chairman, who also served as Defence Minister under Jonathan, admitted that part of the contributing factors to Jonathan’s defeat, was nostalgia among majority of Nigerians for what they viewed as the performance of the Buhari military government of 1984.
