A former Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana, has said the Labour Party Presidential candidate in 2023, Mr. Peter Obi, would win northern votes, should he come back to his former party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Gana, a founding member of the of the PDP, who has been a major canvasser for Obi’s return to the PDP, claimed that the fomer Anambra governor would defeat any contender in Nigeria’s northern states if he contested on the PDP platform.
Gana made the claim during an interview on Arise TV’s Prime Time, amid ongoing speculations about Obi’s potential return to the PDP despite his recent engagements with the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Obi left the PDP in May 2022 to pursue his bid under the LP.
“The PDP is on the ground. I’m a researcher, and I research opinions. In the northern states, Peter Obi under the PDP will defeat any candidate because our people are very fair-minded and just,” Gana said.
He revealed that efforts were still ongoing to bring Obi back into the PDP fold.
“We are reaching out to Peter Obi. Because I’m leading a search team and there are many brilliant people. Peter may be good, but we have somebody better. So, we are searching,” he said.
Gana also admitted that the PDP mishandled Obi’s exit from the party ahead of the 2023 elections.
“We made a mistake in 2023. If I were Atiku, I would say, ‘Peter, it is now your turn; I would give you a vice-president,’ but he didn’t,” he said.
Speaking on the recent internal crises within the party, Gana stated they were largely limited to “a few elites in Abuja” and did not reflect the mood of the party’s broader base across the country.
His words: “I must confess that many people have forgotten that the PDP was created as a grassroots organization.
“In 1998, we were formed and then moving to the elections in 1999 we were in every polling unit, because we are the ones who really won the first election.
“Many people have forgotten the PDP won most of the local governments, when it came to the presidential elections, we won the presidency, we won the Senate, we won the House.
“We were totally in control, and that is why we were very delighted that we restored democracy to Nigeria and re-established civil rule.
“Because for a number of years, there was military rule but we successfully terminated that in a very democratic way, so the PDP was really as it were, a grassroots party.
“That’s why when we said ‘power to the people,’ we meant it because that was what it was, and it has been like that. So when this recent problem happened, it was really among a few elites here in Abuja. It didn’t even go beyond.”
Chuks Okocha
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