Senator Matthew Urhoghide, who previously served as the senator for Edo South District, has blamed Peter Obi’s abrupt defection from the People Democratic Party (PDP), and Iyorchia Ayu, the PDP’s National Chairman, for Atiku Abubakar’s defeat in the February 25 election.
Urhoghide argued that the quarrels between Ayu and the G-5 governors also contributed to Atiku’s loss in the presidential election.
Urhoghide, who recently left the PDP, made the claim on Monday night’s episode of Politics Today on Channels Television.
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He said:
“The election was there for Atiku to win so much that even the APC acknowledged it. Former President Muhammadu Buhari also admitted that it was the division in the PDP that caused our loss.
“That was also what Adams Oshimhole was referring to when he appeared on your platform.”
His regret comes four months after Bola Tinubu, the president in office, was declared the election’s victor.
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To defeat Atiku, who received 6,984,520 votes, the former governor of Lagos polled 8,794,726 votes. Obi finished third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Nonetheless, the senator thought that if the PDP had been united, the outcomes might have been different.
The former Senator said:
“It is a sound school of thought. Obi should have been allowed to remain in PDP. If that had happened, we could have replicated what happened in 2019. That’s because the vote that he got, whether by popularity or whatever happened to him in the PDP that made him leave, would have helped to bring in votes.
“Let me also say this. Even though the governors (G-5) were overbearing by their actions insisting that the National Chairman of the party step down, of course we know the reason, they felt bad maybe because they were not made the party’s presidential candidate. But, at least, we could have avoided any rancour that was going to arise from the decision to pick another person.
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“The only thing that should have been done by the chairman was to say ‘If it will take me stepping aside for the party to win, why not?’ I don’t know what persuaded Senator Iyorchia Ayu to stay. But knowing him and who he is, he is a gentleman.
“If I were Ayu, I would have stepped down. What was important to the party was to win the election. Everything will fall into place. That was equally what happened in my state, Edo, where the PDP came third.”
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