Opinion: 3 Reason Why PDP May Lose 2023 Presidential election to APC

 With just about one and half years away to the 2023 general election, diverse political intrigues are already surfacing on the choice of best candidate to be fielded by the major political parties.

While there are many political parties that are expected to present candidates for the presidential seat, however, no doubts, the contest may likely be a tussle between the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party PDP.

Generally, many would have thought that with the state of the nation, the PDP should be able to maximize the loopholes in the APC-led administration and use same to campaign against them in order to have a smooth ride back to power.

However, this might not be the case because of some of the reasons listed below:

Firstly, if PDP wants to ensure justice and equality, they will not field a northerner but a southerner as their presidential candidate, as the sitting president, President Muhaamadu Buhari who will be completing his 8 years in 2023 and any northern candidate will be from the same region.

Consequently, fielding Abubakar Atiku, Aminu Tambuwal or any northern candidate, may spell doom for the party at the 2023 presidential poll, as many Nigerians, especially the southerners, may likely vote against such candidate.

Additionally, for a party to win a presidential election, it is expected that it field a candidate whose popularity cut across the country and who is also financially buoyant to fund such adventure.

However, in what looks like a dilemma, a look into the PDP caucus today shows that unlike the ruling All Progressives Congress who still has several popular prominent politicians, like Tinubu and some other APC governors from the south, the party does not seems to have a very popular potential candidate which can be sold to Nigerians in case they still go ahead to choose candidate from the south.

Except for Peter Obi in the Southeast and Seyi Makinde of Oyo state, both who have not shown any iota of interest in such high position, it is difficult to point to any other popular and financially buoyant PDP stalwart who can favourably compete with the bigwigs in the APC camp.

Thus, this seems to stand as an obstacle on the way of the PDP to achieving victory come 2023.

Finally, politics they say, is a game of number; similarly the recent gale of defection being witnessed by the PDP may stand as an impediment from them achieving success in the forthcoming presidential poll.

Within the last two years, no fewer than two PDP governors have switched camps to the APC, (Ebonyi and Cross River state governors) even as another northern governor like Bello Matawalle at some point was also rumored to have plans to dump the party, not to talk of many prominent politician that had left the party for the APC.

At the moment, the PDP can only boast of 14 controlled states while the ruling party has 21, and APGA has 1.

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As a result, with these challenges before the PDP, it may still be very difficult for them to get themselves back to power in 2023.

But, in your view, what do you think the PDP can do in order to take leadership of the country in 2023 ?