BY UGOCHUKWU ALARIBE
ABA – Former Senate President and Secretary of the Board of Trustees, BOT, of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Senator Adolphus Wabara, has said that the party would not have lost the 2015 presidential poll if ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, had heeded his advice not to contest the election.
Wabara who stated this in an interview with Vanguard in Aba, explained that he visited the former president in 2011 and warned him about the impending loss of power by the PDP if he contests the 2015 presidential poll, but Jonathan ignored his advice as the PDP lost power.
He disclosed that his advice to Jonathan caused his then Chief of Staff, Chief Mike Oghiadomhe, to deny him further access to the President. However, he maintained that he doesn’t hate Jonathan, but was moved to call his attention to what he described as the political arrangement where power is shared between the Northern and Southern zones of Nigeria.
“If President Goodluck Jonathan had listened to me, PDP would not have lost power in 2015. I visited President Jonathan in 2011 and pleaded with him not to contest the 2015 presidential election. If he had heeded my advice, we would not be suffering today. We lost because of Jonathan’s misunderstanding of politics. I advised him not to contest, you are not a Northerner.2015 belongs to the North, you can’t complete their tenure. But you can complete the tenure of your late boss, that’s constitutional. He ignored my advice and his then Chief of Staff, Chief Mike Oghiadomhe denied me further access to the President.”
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The former Senate president, who represented Abia South senatorial district from 1999 to 2007, stated that zoning is a policy of the PDP, stressing the party’s failure to insist on zoning in 2015, was a mistake.
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“Zoning is key in PDP, when you talk of zoning, you talk of equity. Our party macro zones and micro zones positions. PDP would have been in power if President Jonathan had respected our policy of zoning in 2015. It was a mistake by the PDP.”
