By Alabi Williams / Posted 1 September, 2025
The decision by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to zone its 2027 presidential ticket to the South is made to look like a reset for the party. A major handicap that afflicted the party since 2010 stemmed from a misalignment in its zoning principle, when President Umaru Yar’Adua took ill and was unable to complete the eight years that was due to him and the North.
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Now that the party is cornered to zone to the South, in the bid to align with the zoning order foisted by theAll Progressives Congress (APC), will the PDP be more competitive in 2027, or be further exposed to incursion by outside investors?
The PDP championed the zoning principle in 1999, when it willed the ticket to the South. The South, by 1999, had been schemed out of the highest office in the country for 16 years, after soldiers overthrew the civilian government headed by Shehu Shagari in 1983. Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar, who rotated the baton among themselves were military generals from the North. By some default military arrangement, Southern officers were hamstrung to push and sustain a coup to grab power. But democracy offers opportunities to negotiate access.
In addition to the aforesaid, the South, particularly, South-west suffered the additional punishment of being robbed the opportunity to produce a president for the country in 1993.
Africa’s illustrious son, MKO Abiola, was also manhandled and liquidated in the process. It was thought that ceding the Presidency to the South in 1999, could heal the injury and bring the South back to the table.
Even though it was a PDP contemplation, it approximated the feeling in the other parties, the All Peoples Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD), which tagged along in a coalition that featured a joint Southern candidate. It was deliberate that the two presidential candidates, Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae, were from the South-west.
As provided in the 1999 Constitution, Obasanjo did two terms of eight years that ended in 2007. The party kept faith with its rotation arrangement and won the election, which yielded the presidency for Yar’Adua, who couldn’t complete his first term in office, due to illness and death on May 5, 2010.
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There was a stalemate to get PDP stakeholders in the North to allow Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to be sworn into office in substantive capacity, because it was truly the turn of the North, as they put it. When political tempers simmered, Jonathan completed Yar’Adua’s remaining two years and stakeholders of the party persuaded the North to let him run in 2011.
It was not an easy negotiation, but Jonathan prevailed. It was when he pushed his luck in 2015, to run for another term, that he was resisted and the PDP lost power. As far as the PDP (North) is concerned till date, they are still owed the years Yar’Adua could not continue in office. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is among those who share this view. To them, it has nothing to do with the zoning arrangement of APC.
Meanwhile, the APC is now stuck with the zoning principle the PDP could not perfect, willy nilly. After Buhari’s eight years, the logic is that the South will hold the office for eight years. That’s what is convenient for now. Recall that in 2023, the party nearly misused the advantage it had to retain power, when it toyed with plots to deny Tinubu the ticket. He looked set to clinch the ticket but some in the Presidency and their party were not comfortable with that.
However, grit and resource allocation won the battle. Today, governors and leaders of the party have chorused that there is no vacancy in the Villa come 2027. That one is settled for APC.
For the PDP, the euphoria of zoning has elicited regrets in some quarters. They say the PDP should have zoned the presidency to the South in 2023. Abba Morro, Minority Leader in the Senate and stalwart of the party said the party erred when it gave the ticket to Atiku. Moro, however admitted that in 2022, the party threw open the zoning arrangement to deliberately put its best foot forward and to defeat APC.
At that time, Tinubu was just a candidate, struggling to contain institutional barriers; now that he is fully in charge, where are the best feet Morro wants to summon in the South to defeat Tinubu?
Many in the PDP now think Atiku is their problem. Maybe. Now that he’s gone, let there be more coherence in charting the way forward. Party leaders are said to be wooing Goodluck Jonathan and Peter Obi to return and contest in 2027. Since Jonathan left office, he has not associated with the party at any level. The man has become an international citizen, preaching peace and good governance where there are electoral challenges. Apart from that, it doesn’t look like he left anything back in the Aso Villa that he can remedy in the next four years, if indeed he is fielded and he wins.
The only thing that recommends him to PDP bookmakers, is the assumption that he can only run for four years, since he had previously done six. Even that premise is subject to controversy and different interpretations, over whether he is still permitted to take another Oath of Office, having done it twice.
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As for Obi, the man left the PDP for the Labour Party (LP), which he single-handedly piloted to win six million votes and coming third in the 2023 presidential election. Obi has allegedly said he would be comfortable doing just four years and that would be enough to fill the governance gap in the country.
Obi seems to fit the bill for PDP, as one who has capacity to win if reasonably paired with a vice-presidential candidate for the North, and also do just four years. So, is the PDP truly looking to win the 2027 election or just working according to plans believed to be remote-controlled from the ruling party? Is the party sufficiently reconciled and strong enough to feature in the next elections, when their governors are neither here nor there?
As things stand, with APC and PDP picking their presidential candidates from the South, the contest is significantly narrowed, but it’s no smart move by PDP. The political map of 2023 and the recent alignments show the APC controls 23 states while the PDP manages 10. In the two years of Tinubu administration, the APC poached Delta and Rivers states from the PDP, with the promise to convert more opposition governors before 2027.
On that basis, the APC could be said to enjoy a comfortable spread. Experience has shown that the number of states a party controls has direct impact on election results. Governors are directly involved in helping parties win elections, because when parties succeed, they too benefit. Governors deploy incumbency powers to convert state resources to mobilise voters on behalf of their partes. On that note, the APC is better positioned.
Despite zoning its ticket to the South, the PDP has been weakened significantly in the South-south. It will struggle to make pass mark in Delta and Akwa Ibom, where governors elected on its ticket have abandoned the party. In Rivers, the PDP is disfigured because Abuja has imposed APC on it to form PDPAPC.
In the South-west, PDP cannot trounce APC in Bola Tinubu’s homebase, where the sentiments are curiously in favour of government despite overwhelming evidence of bad governance. In the North, APC is far more visible and stronger than PDP. Even n the South-east, PDP has lost substantial ground.
Therefore, zoning the presidential ticket to the South may not be its magic wand for 2027. It could even be a ploy to play into the hands of the ruling party. It is feared that come November 15th and 16th, when it holds the much-delayed elective national convention, external forces would nominate candidates and infiltrate the party to make it more confused before 2027.
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Bookmakers think there could be something smarter in zoning arrangements if the fledgling African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the troubled LP manage to come up with surprises. It is taking the ADC time to show character with some of their leading advocates still hedging their moves too cautiously. They have one leg in their old parties and want to be taken seriously by potential voters.
They are also unable to put to rest the acrimony over who becomes their presidential candidate. Though it’s not time yet to announce aspirants, both Atiku and Rotimi Amaechi have continued to boast of their individual capacities to become president. They have not repented from the old ways that rendered them vulnerable at previous elections. Obi has remained tentative, careful not to make full disclosures.
However, despite the jostling and horse trading in the parties, what they must not forget is the present wantonness in leadership that has left Nigerians pauperised and gasping for breath.
While the economy squeezes life out of citizens, kidnappers have managed to squeezed N2.57 billion from them in ransom payments in just one year, between July 2024 and June 2025, according to a new SBM Intelligence study on the country’s kidnap-for-ransom economy.
Instead of providing enabling environment for genuine businesses to thrive, the failure of government to provide security has exposed citizens to terrorism and death. Many villages have been overrun and annihilated, with internally displaced persons looking for where to sleep. Mass of worshippers are killed inside mosques and politicians are not embarrassed.
Nigeria’s deep-seated governance challenges were again highlighted in the 2025 Chandler Good Government Index (CGGI), a global measure of efficiency and effectiveness in government.
The summary of the report is that Nigeria is not among top five African countries that make deliberate efforts to deliver good governance— Mauritius, Rwanda, Botswana, Morroco and South Africa. Nigeria ranked 116 out of 1,993 countries.
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The message for the opposition is that there is work to do. They have to get into government first to know what to do, not to be disorganised.
Note: This article was first published by The Guardian Newspaper.
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