Chief Bode George, a former Deputy National Chairman (South) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has voiced strong concerns about the potential consequences if Atiku Abubakar had won the 2023 presidential election.
Speaking during an appearance on Arise TV’s The Morning Show on Friday, George argued that Nigeria would have experienced serious instability had Atiku, a northerner, succeeded former president Muhammadu Buhari, also from the North.
George, a veteran politician and influential figure within the PDP, stated that Nigeria’s political landscape would not have tolerated another northerner taking over the presidency immediately after Buhari.
According to George, such an outcome would have violated the country’s established norm of power rotation between the North and South. He emphasised that Nigeria’s unwritten rule of balancing power between the regions is essential to maintaining national unity and stability.
“If Atiku had won, I would have stayed in my house because I knew that, for real, in the future, he would collapse,” George said. “This country would never accept it. If he had won that election, do you think this country would have been stable?
“Because somebody from the North (Buhari) had just finished eight years, and our norm is that after eight years, the presidential candidate must come to the South.”
George also expressed his dissatisfaction with how the PDP’s internal processes were handled in the lead-up to the 2023 election. He accused party leaders of manipulating the zoning arrangement to favour Atiku’s candidacy, a move he believes triggered the crisis within the party.
“The moment we interfered with the zoning arrangement, manipulating the whole process to satisfy Atiku, that’s where the problem started,” George asserted. “For us to pretend as if there was not a problem, we are just wasting time.”
Before the PDP primary election in 2023, there was significant agitation within the party for the presidential ticket to be zoned to the South, in line with the rotation system enshrined in the party’s constitution.
The demand became particularly strong because Buhari, a northerner from Katsina State, was completing his second term. However, the party’s eventual decision to field Atiku as its candidate led to discontent and division among its members.
George pointed out that the decision to choose Atiku as the PDP’s presidential flagbearer led to a deepening crisis within the party. Several key party members and a group of five governors known as the G5, who had advocated for a southern candidate, withdrew their support for Atiku, further polarising the party.
“The PDP is now polarised into three camps,” George explained. “The problem started with the manipulation of the zoning arrangement. For us to resolve this crisis, we must first admit that there is a problem and then sit down to address it.”
Adding to the ongoing turmoil within the PDP, George recently declined to serve on the party’s newly inaugurated reconciliation committee. The committee, chaired by Tom Ikimi, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, was established by the National Working Committee (NWC) to address the internal wrangling within the party.
George, however, made it clear that he could not serve under Ikimi, citing concerns about the committee’s composition. He alleged that Ikimi belongs to a faction within the party that has contributed to its division.
“I can’t serve under him (Ikimi) because when did he join the party?” George questioned. “We know within ourselves the various groupings that are dividing the party. That’s what the party should sit down first and resolve.”
George went further to criticise the current leadership of the PDP for not taking the necessary steps to heal the party’s wounds. He argued that setting up committees without first addressing the root causes of the party’s issues is ineffective and will not lead to genuine reconciliation.
“The chairman of that committee is from one group, and the secretary of the committee is from the same group,” George pointed out. “Am I just to go there and sit and look like some undecided animal? We need to do a fundamental review of what went wrong during the last elections, come up with solutions, and reunite everybody because a divided house will always remain a defeated house.”
The PDP, once Nigeria’s dominant political party, has struggled with internal conflicts and leadership disputes since losing the 2015 presidential election. The 2023 election only deepened these divisions, with different factions within the party clashing over the choice of the presidential candidate and the broader direction of the party.
