The Will Nigeria
The popular political dictum that politicians think of the next election always appears to be clogging the wheel of progress in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), ahead of preparations for the 2023 election. It is also proving to be a bitter pill for its leaders to swallow in the ongoing tiff between the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar and Governor Nyesom Wike of River State.
THEWILL can authoritatively reveal that just as preparations for next year’s general elections gets underway, considerations for the 2027 general election are already playing out in the crisis within the opposition party.
Reliable party sources say the raging issues, which had metamorphosed from that of the party to the group and then the personal, have continued to rear their heads and make reconciliation difficult.
The first issue had to do with the zoning of the presidential ticket to the South, following popular public clamour, as a way of addressing a perceived unfairness and inequity against the backdrop of clannish and nepotistic tendencies on the part of the current Federal Government.
Although the issue appears to have been ‘resolved’ on the grounds that rotating the presidential ticket between the North and South was for a sitting President and not a candidate in an election, it still boils within the party and it is ready to be whipped up during negotiation.
The second issue which is that of the group, deals with what is now commonly called the Wike Group (though there is also an Atiku group that does not flaunt its members publicly), which had maintained a hard stand in support of the Rivers governor after he was allegedly cheated out of the race for the VP slot.
Composed of many serving and ex-governors, ex-ministers and other party stakeholders, the group has been depleting against the backdrop of several moves at reconciliation within the party. Thus, vocal members of the group like Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State had since publicly declared his support for Atiku’s presidential aspiration. Another strong member is Governor Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa State, with whom Wike and Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State once dictated the tune in the party before and immediately after the former National Chairman, Uche Secondus, was booted out…
