How PDP Lost a Golden Opportunity by Not Choosing Wike as VP

Ilesanmi AdekanbiDecember 9, 2023

1 minute read

The 2023 presidential election in Nigeria was a close contest between the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The APC candidate, Bola Tinubu, won the election by a narrow margin of less than two million votes over the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

However, some analysts believe that the PDP could have won the election if they had chosen a different running mate for Atiku.

Reno Omokri, a prominent sociopolitical activist and a supporter of the PDP, said that the party made a huge mistake by not picking Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as the vice presidential candidate.

Wike, who is also the former governor of Rivers State, is widely regarded as a strong and influential leader in the South-South and South-East regions of the country. Omokri argued that Wike could have delivered the votes of Oyo, Abia, Rivers, Enugu, and Benue states to the PDP, which would have been enough to secure the victory.

Omokri wrote on X, a popular social media platform: “The biggest mistake we made in the PDP during the #NigerianElections2023 was not giving Wike the vice presidential slot of our party.

“By how many votes did we lose to the APC? Less than two million. If we had a running mate like Wike, we would have gotten that collectively from Rivers, Oyo, Abia, Enugu, and Benue with the G-5.

“ In politics, you do not do what you like to do. You do what you have to do. Under normal circumstances, an alpha personality like Wike would be too assertive to be a follower. I would not even support it if all things were equal.”

Omokri’s statement reflects the frustration and disappointment of many PDP supporters who felt that the party missed a golden opportunity to reclaim power from the APC.

The PDP has not won a presidential election since 2011, when Goodluck Jonathan was the incumbent president. The party will have to regroup and strategize for the next election in 2027, hoping to avoid the same mistakes that cost them the 2023 election.