A Minister of State for Health under former President Goodluck Jonathan, Chief Fidelis Nwankwo has explained the main reason for his principal’s loss in the 2015 general election.
He said that the election was lost because the incumbent administration at the time downplayed the importance of zoning of the presidency.
Nwankwo, who is a former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Federal Commissioner, stated this in an interview published by Sunday Sun.
“Well, honestly speaking, by the time we lost the election, it was not obvious to us. We didn’t foresee it, but with hindsight, one can begin to hazard some guesses as to the reasons I think we lost that election.
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“I want to believe that one of the factors was the issue of rotation of the position of the Presidency within our party, the People’s Democratic Party.
“You recall that at the inception of the political party in 1998, the first president was Olusegun Obasanjo, a Southerner. He did two tenures of eight years, and after him there was Musa Yar’Adua whose tenure was short-lived because of death.
“Incidentally going by the constitution, Goodluck Jonathan who was his vice president had to take over and completed his four years in the first tenure; he did a full four-year tenure of his own and wanted to go back, probably that was a mistake we in PDP made.
“We didn’t know that this was not well received even by members of the party from the North. But probably again due to the power of incumbency, it was not properly voiced out, and we went into that election thinking that we had a united front, not knowing that some people had resentments and to the point they were either unwilling to sell the Jonathan presidency in the North, and in some cases they were even afraid because the people felt that they were betraying them by joining forces with the South to extend the tenure of Jonathan. So, for me, I think that was the main reason we lost that election.”
He advised the PDP to learn from its mistake and take the issue of zoning or rotation of positions seriously.