The Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party Atiku Abubakar would have emerged as the winner of the 2023 elections if he had retained the states he won in the 2019 polls which have now been taken from him by the flag bearer of the Labour Party Peter Obi.
Obi was Atiku’s running mate in 2019 but the former Anambra State Governor chose to try his luck as presidential ticket holder in the Labour Party in this year’s polls.
However, results from this year’s elections showed the joint ticket of four years ago would have been a massive success this time had it been repeated as the combination of the results of the two candidates would have become unassailable for the ruling party All Progressives Congress.
Obi’s emergence in the race has proved to be a massive blow to the PDP as statistics showed that the Labour Party flushed the party away from their traditional states.
Many states in both north and south including FCT, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Imo, Taraba, Cross River, Delta, Rivers, and Plateau are traditional strongholds of the PDP but the majority of the areas have now been taken over by Obi’s party given the results that have been provisionally released so far by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The PDP won in 18 states in 2019′; they are FCT, Enugu, Anambra, Abia, Ebonyi, Imo, Taraba, Cross River, Delta, Rivers, and Plateau, Oyo, Ondo, Bayelsa, Benue, Edo, Adamawa.
However, according to the provisional results announced so far, Obi is snatching nine out of those states which are FCT, Enugu, Anambra, Abia, Ebonyi, Imo, Cross River, Delta, and Plateau.
It is pertinent to note that factors responsible for the shift include religion as these states are dominated by adherents of Christianity and ethnicity as they are most domiciled in the south especially southeast where Obi hails from.
Invariably, the emergence of Obi in this poll hurts the standing of the PDP, his former party and its flag bearer Atiku. Although the two-time Anambra Governor is taking at least two states from the APC including Lagos and Nasarawa, the nine he is snatching from Atiku has dealt a huge blow on the chances of the former vice president.
