Senate minority leader Abba Moro says the Peoples Democratic Party made a mistake when it jettisoned the zoning arrangement in the 2023 presidential election.

Senate minority leader, Abba Moro, acknowledged this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, a day after the 102 PDP National Executive Council meeting at the party’s National secretariat in Abuja, where it was agreed that the party’s 2027 presidential ticket be zoned to the South.

According to Mr Moro, the decision, which led to the emergence of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar at the 2022 PDP primary, also from the north, was a mistake that backfired at the 2023 presidential election.

The Benue South senator said, “That decision backfired because eventually people resisted the intention to get a northern candidate to succeed a northern president, (and) for part of that reason, lost the election.

“As a result of how the election turned out, because the Nigerian people spoke, definitely, it was an error. To lose a very monumental election in that disastrous manner, as it were, is certainly something to regret.”

However, Mr Moro noted that this time around, PDP has been “reconciling, reviewing our strategies, and examining what happened, and virtually all of us agreed that a mistake was made in 2023 in fielding a northern candidate”.

“This time around, in the spirit of unity, fairness, and justice, PDP leaders decided to swallow their saliva and say, look, let’s take this thing to the South, where the majority of the people expected that it would have been,” said the politician.

The decision unsettled the party in 2022, which led to members openly engaging in anti-party activities. This led to the formation of the G-5, led by then-Governor Nyesom Wike, and some party leaders publicly endorsed the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Tinubu, as well as the defection of others, notably former vice-presidential aspirant Peter Obi, to the Labour Party.