Poor performance of PDP in Cross River:
“We are going back to drawing board” – Senator Bassey
By our Admin
The performance of the People’s Democratic Party PDP in the February 25th Presidential and National Assembly Elections in Cross River State has lowered the moral of her members and has pushed them back to the drawing board.
These were the confessions of Senator Gershom Bassey, the state coordinator of Atiku Abubakar Presidential campaign organisation in Cross River.
The results of the elections as released by the Independent National Electoral Commission shows that the Labour Party candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, won the presidential election in Cross River State, followed by the APC and leaving the PDP in the third position. A break down by local government area performance shows that the PDP won only one local government area out of 18 in the State. Labour Party won 10 LGAs and the APC won 7.
For the National Assembly Elections in the State, the PDP got one out of the three Senate seats. And got two out of the eight House of Representatives seats.
Reacting to the PDP performance, Senator Gershom Bassey said “It is time for us to all go back to the drawing board and see what we did right or wrong. We in the PDP have to go out and do some soul searching to see how we can get things right for next time.”
“The PDP has a big task to go back to the drawing board and look at things again.”
He spoke in an interview expressing his views after the presidential and national assembly elections.
Asked about the agitation of Back to South and the rotation principal for the state governorship position ahead of the March 11th elections, he responded thus; “the principle of rotation is still there but as you know, my party has taken a different path and I am a party man, so for now, I would just say we as politicians must always listen to the people that we aspire to lead. For now, I really do not have much to say about it.”
Emphasizing on the post February 25th 2023 election lessions, he said ‘the lessons we can learn for next time is that the PDP has been greatly divided because if you look at everybody that won, they are all former PDP members, including the Labour party candidate that won. Next time could be anytime, it could be in a re-run election, run off election or governorship election but these are some of the lessons we must learn deliberately for the next elections.”
He defended the handling of the crisis in the PDP which pitched Atiku, the presidential candidate against Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State.
His words: “that may be a factor but it was never a civil war. We were always talking to each other. If you look at our presidential campaign council, there were nominees from these groups and if you look at the state campaign organisation, there also were nominees from those groups. So the disagreement would have been a forced disagreement from an outsider because within the state, there was never a sharp division as they are talking about.”
Reacting to statements credited to him and former Governor Liyel Imoke on the consequences of Atiku losing the Presidential election, he said, “I do believe we would have been better off with an Atiku victory. It is very important for us that in the elections, Atiku wins because if he does not win, it would affect our governorship candidate and that is just a fact.”
Now Atiku has loss, “everybody’s moral is low, Labour Party was just a phenomenon. A situation were somebody who did not even print a poster, won the House of Representatives election against a very experienced legislator. It is a very unusual occurrence and that was a complete tsunami. Labour Party won the state and that affects all other parties going forward but fortunately for us, Labour Party does not have a gubernatorial candidate, otherwise we would have been in trouble.”