Zoning PDP presidential ticket may cause feelings of exclusion – Bala Mohammed

The Executive Governor of Bauchi state, Bala Mohammed has said that zoning the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, 2023 presidential ticket may cause feelings of exclusion.

Mohammed stated this on Thursday during a Channels Television programme.

According to the governor, that decision not to zone the presidential ticket would provide a level-playing field for all candidates, and encourage a merit-based process.

Speaking on why PDP lost the 2015 general election, he said “In 2015, we lost because we were so over-confident and there was too much internal wrangling. We lost in the north, even in the states where we had comparative advantage, because of the wrangling that particularly came out of our lack of internal democracy.”

The governor said to prevent a repetition of lack of internal democracy in the party, zoning the presidential ticket would not carry everybody along.

“And that is why today, we are saying that we have seen some zones that have not had a shot at the presidency for a long time — the south-east and the north-east. But we’re not yet going to say that the choice of the presidential flagbearer should be left exclusively to those zones. We’ll give a level-playing field because good things are from every part of the country, and we have good hands.

“We are just saying that if we zone completely to those places, there may be some feelings of exclusion. There will be some feelings of even shortchanging Nigerians in terms of presenting the best. The merit-based leadership recruitment that we want to do, is even at the same time, looking at history.”

Mohammed also alleged that PDP lost the 2019 presidential election to President Muhammadu Buhari — as a result of “manipulation”, stating that the party presented evidence but it was not accepted.

He said “We do not want to be the weeping boys, we have looked inward to see what had prevented us from winning the election. We have a lot of evidence, which we tendered but was not accepted. The issue now is that we know we are all Nigerians. We know the nooks and crannies of Nigeria. We know what happened in 2019.

“We are not only looking at the other side and playing the blame game; that is the fault of this present administration. We’re also critical in ourselves, where we have some gaps, loopholes and inadequacies.”