‘PDP lost election due to arrogance,’ former Governor says

Former Governor of Cross River state, Donald Duke has said that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost in the 2015 general elections due to the arrogance of its leaders.

The former governor made the statements on Monday, April 20, 2015, during a programme on Channels Television.

“The arrogance had it reached its zenith when five governors, five PDP governors, threatened to leave the party; and the leaders said ‘let them go’ simply because they were the governors who would be against the renomination of the president,” Duke said.

He however urged the party to re-strategize to keep it from fizzling out.

“It has to go back and re-strategize – a number of things have gone wrong. First of all, we need to have an opposition in the country. It would be very sad to allow the PDP to just fizzle out. That would be wrong, not just for the party,” he said.

“For the country, we need a strong opposition party to keep those in authority on their toes. We need to ask ourselves very salient questions; where did we go wrong?” he added.

“They’ve been in power of an office for 16 years, they need to consolidate – the base of the PDP now is largely in the southsouth and southeast – consolidate from there and re-grow,” Duke said.

The former governor paid a congratulatory visit to President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari after the latter defeated President Goodluck Jonathan to emerge winner of the March 28 election.