A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Segun Sowunmi, has described the outcome of the 2023 general elections as scoring an own goal.
This is as he blames his party for being responsible for its own loss in the just concluded elections.
According to him, unlike in 2019 when the party believed strongly that it won but was cheated, the 2023 general election turnout was an unusual one.
Sowunmi, as learnt by Rant HQ, made this assertion when he was featured on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday.
The PDP chieftain, who likened the circumstances that resulted in the party’s loss to scoring an own goal, advanced that the party could not even get their traditional numbers of victory in some states.
He explained that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) did a good job in the accreditation of voters during the elections.
Sowunmi, however, blamed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for failing to transmit the results of the polls electronically, especially during the February 25 poll.
Sowunmi stated that “I will say that the 2023 election was an unusual election. In 2019, we felt and we really strongly believed we were robbed but in 2023 I will like to say we gave it out by ourselves. I mean you can map the areas where we didn’t get our traditional numbers and you can just see PDP is responsible for not getting it here, PDP is responsible for not getting it there.
“So, our struggle or if you like their struggle because I wasn’t involved in that, their struggle trying to show we are this and that created a scenario where they were trying to settle a score with the general elections. It was a terrible own goal for our party.”
Recall that the PDP had some internal crisis which could not be solved before the election. Five governors of the party had refused to work for the party’s flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar, as they insisted the embattled PDP national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, steps down a candidate of southern extraction.
