Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike on Sunday delivered one of his most blistering post‑election indictments of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), accusing its 2023 presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, and then national chairman of the party Iyorchia Ayu, and several other party grandees of having “laid the foundation for the burial of the main opposition.”
Speaking in an interview on Channels TV on the sidelines of the PDP elective national convention in Abuja, monitored by our correspondent, Minister Wike described the 2022 PDP presidential primaries as the moment the once‑dominant party fatally veered from its founding principles, particularly its zoning arrangement intended to balance power between the different regions of the country.
“God knows why things happen this way,” Minister Wike said.
The FCT Minister, however, has described the current push at the party’s elective national convention on Sunday as an attempt to repair those fractures.
“That’s what I have said here, that we have started the healing. We try to talk about the unity,” Minister Wike stressed.
“This was the venue where Atiku Abubakar, David Mark, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, and co—laid the foundation of the burial of PDP, unknown to us that they had other reasons and did not want PDP to survive.
“But I thank God that God has said: man purposes and God disposes.”
Minister Wike, a former Governor of Rivers State anchored his criticism on Section 7(c) of the PDP constitution, which provides that all key positions, elective and appointive, should be zoned among Nigeria’s regions to reflect the country’s ethnic and religious diversity.
“Remember that our constitution of the party, particularly Section 7(c), did say that every position, be it elective or appointive, shall be zoned to the various regions,” he said.
“The Founding Fathers of the party knew why that was so. Nigeria is a complex society. Nigeria is a nation of several ethnic groups, religions, and so what? And so, they had this in mind that if you want the unity of this country, the unity of this party, we should zone some things.”
With then‑President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, completing his second and final term, Minister Wike argued that PDP elders should have “by common sense” insisted the party’s presidential ticket move to the south.
“Taking into cognisance that the person who was in the saddle of power then — Mohammed Buhari — was finishing his eight years, of course, common sense dictates that the next president should come from the south,” the Minister stressed.
“We said, look, this is what we should do. They said: ‘Oh, no need. It should not be zoned until the emergence of a national chairman for the party.’”
Minister Wike recalled proposing a trade‑off: “We said, look, the next party chairman should go to the north while the president should be zoned to the south — unknown to us that they had a hidden agenda.”
Instead, he said, party insiders rallied around Iyorchia Ayu, a former Senate president from the north, as national chairman — a choice Wike now describes in starkly personal terms.
“And then we brought in Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, whom we never knew was so corrupt, so corrupt,” he said.
“I have said it time and time again without number and up till now, he has never sued me.”
Revisiting the drama of the 2022 convention that produced Atiku as the PDP presidential nominee, Minister Wike accused party leaders of allowing last‑minute manoeuvres that, in his view, violated both the spirit and the rules of the contest.
“Now, even when they called all the aspirants to address the delegates, we did, and they said we are entering the electoral process. That means voting will start,” he recalled.
“The next thing we heard was that there would be an announcement. What was the announcement? Aminu Waziri Tambuwal has something to say.”
Tambuwal, then Governor of Sokoto State and himself a presidential aspirant, famously stepped down and endorsed Atiku on the convention floor.
“He said he was no longer interested. Fine, but they gave you another room to campaign,” Wike said.
“He now said, ‘Vote for my senior brother Atiku Abubakar,’ when other people had spoken with him.
“And they did not think it necessary that they should call the other aspirants again, if they had anything to say, based on the fact that an aspirant who had spoken had come back now to say that so‑so candidate should be supported, which was a campaign when the campaign had already stopped.That was manipulation, and we allowed it.”
After Atiku’s emergence, Minister Wike said, his camp pressed again for a regional balancing act: letting the national chairmanship return to the south if the presidential ticket remained in the north.
He described party leaders’ refusal as an act of “impunity.”
“Then after, we said: okay, let the national chairman come back to the south so that there will be a balancing. Of course, impunity being what they had in mind, they said no. They said no,” he said.
According to Minister Wike, his insistence that “the presidency must come to the south” triggered the internal conflict that hobbled the PDP in the 2023 elections.
“That was what led to the crisis of PDP,” he said. “They started again: ‘Zone this presidency to the south.’ They said no.”
NewsQuest reports that Minister Wike, went on to back Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the rival All Progressives Congress (APC), in the 2023 election despite remaining a PDP member.
He therefore, urged observers to study the emerging line‑up behind efforts to reset the party.
“Look at those attending the convention today. Be honest. Look at the organization. It tells you people who are now serious. It tells people who have made up their mind, yes, who have made a mistake,” he said.
“Now, they want to correct our mistakes, and in correcting that mistake, it starts with this convention,” the FCT Minister added.
Minister Wike also described the elective national convention as a test of whether the PDP can still run a credible internal process.
“Let us see how able you are to be able to organize a credible, very coordinated convention,” he said. “Now, having succeeded in that, we believe that now that we have the National Working Committee (NWC), they will come up with a timetable that will continue to heal the party.
“It is not going to be a one‑month affair. Once you are committed, you believe in PDP, we will attend that,” the FCT Minister added.
