Former Deputy National Chairman (South), of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Bode George, says Nigeria would have been consumed if Atiku Abubakar had won the 2023 presidential election.
George spoke on Friday, when he featured on Arise TV’s ‘The Morning Show’.
Abubakar, who was the candidate of the PDP in the election, lost to Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
George said Nigerians would not have accepted a scenario where Abubakar — who hails from the north — succeeded Muhammadu Buhari, another northerner.
“If Atiku had won — I would have stayed in my house because I knew that for real in the future he would collapse. This country would never accept,” he said.
“If he had won that election, you think this country would have been stable? Because somebody from the north (Buhari) had just finished eight years and our own norm is that after the eight years, the presidential candidate must come to the south.”
Bode George claimed that the party’s zoning arrangement was “manipulated” to favour Abubakar.
“The moment we interfered with it, manipulating the whole process to satisfy Atiku, that’s where the problem started. For us to pretend as if there was not a problem, we are just wasting time,” George said.
Before the PDP primary election of 2023, some party stakeholders, including a group of five governors, had requested that the presidential ticket be zoned to the south, in line with the rotation system in the party’s constitution.
The agitation heightened because Buhari, a northerner from Katsina, was completing his second term in office.
Some members of the party withdrew their support for Atiku after he won the presidential ticket.
George also blamed the crisis in the PDP on Abubakar’s nomination as the party’s flagbearer.
The PDP chieftain also said he would not serve as a member of the party’s reconciliation committee.
