Senator Ahmed Makarfi, the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, National Caretaker Committee, has said that the party under Former President Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election because the party was not communicating well with the electorates.
According to Vanguard, he said other factors that led to the party losing the Presidential seat was because it forwarded Jonathan for a second term instead of fielding a northern candidate.
Senator Makarfi who gave the statement when he appeared on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics also however said that PDP is better positioned now more than ever to clinch back the presidential seat, boasting that if elections were to hold today, that PDP will definitely win the polls.
He said there was a lot of propaganda against the party then and that the party failed to dilute the propaganda, the consequences which saw them packing from the Aso Villa.
He said the then opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, party poisoned the minds of Nigerians in the north with untrue stories of insecurity, especially tagging it with the terrorist Boko Haram insurgents.
He said that made the north to feel very aggrieved then that the region had equally lost the presidential ticket, a development that saw them refuse to vote for its candidate.
While drawing the attention of Nigerians to what he described as the failures of APC, Senator Makarfi said his party is well positioned now to win the coming 2019 election because, according to him, Nigerians have seen that APC has failed in security, economy and other areas.
“There was a lot of propaganda against the PDP and we were not effective enough in countering that propaganda,” he said “Also, we made mistakes, we were not communicating very well with the citizens; language was not one that could have been effective at that material time.”
“The language that was used in campaigning and talking from that time going forward was not one that could have made tempers to go down.”
“The major reason was the feeling and again, a lot of propaganda built into it and that insecurity was so much, especially related to Boko Haram.
“And a lot of negative complaints were made against the PDP and that resonated with a large part of voters in the North and we paid the price of losing that election.”
“We are more than ready and if we are to go to polls today, we are confident that PDP will return elected.”
“We acknowledge our shortcomings but we can see from the performance of the APC – look at the level of appreciation of the naira, look at unemployment, look at all sort crime.
“Under PDP, you couldn’t have that because we are a national party and a party that believes in fairness, justice and equity, and a party that gives equal opportunity to Nigerians no matter where you come from,” he added.