PDP will self-destruct if it refuses to zone presidential ticket, says Doyin Okupe

Doyin Okupe, a former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will cease to exist if refuses to zone its presidential ticket.

Okupe said this in a series of tweets on Friday.

As the country prepares for the 2023 elections, there have been speculations on if parties will zone their presidential tickets to the southern region since the current president is from the north.

The PDP had recently released its schedule of activities for the 2023 elections, but the party is yet to decide on zoning.

According to Okupe, since parties don’t select candidates from the same religion for their presidential and vice-presidential tickets, it would be wrong for a northerner to take over power from President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.

“Perfidy is the word. Dishonesty, injustice and insensitivity are the hallmarks of the current attitude of the PDP towards its own established policy of fairness and its celebrated mantra for equity and justice in the sharing of political offices through zoning between the north and the south of the country,” he wrote.

“This zoning policy had guaranteed stability and entrenched sense of belonging and equity within our polity.

“The efficacy of the zoning principle is so self evident that even rival political parties have adopted it as a political tool to ensure fairness and justice among their own membership.

“For the avoidance of doubt, if Muslim/Muslim or Christian/Christian presidential tickets will not work in Nigeria, so will a northern president from any party, following an uninterrupted 8-year rule by the current president, not work in 2023.

“But if the PDP, based on any presumptive consideration, chooses the perilous and clearly unjust and inequitable path of throwing the presidential ticket at its primaries open to all zones, then the PDP will finally, through an unforced error, have activated a self-destruct political app and would have commenced an irreversible journey to perdition.”

PDP AND THE ROAD TO PERDITION.

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Perfidy is the word. Dishonesty, injustice and insensitivity are the hallmarks of the current attitude of the PDP towards its own established policy of fairness and its celebrated mantra for equity and justice in the sharing of political offices.

— Doyin (@doyinokupe) March 18, 2022