Nigeria is transiting into another election year and former President Goodluck Jonathan is in the news for what has become a recurring decimal. In the past 10 years, towards every election year, whirl wind of speculation about his return to office envelopes the country and dominates national political discourse. A few days ago, in what political analysts term the North’s deliberate plot to divide Southern votes to pave the way for the emergence of a Northern President next year, the Oyo state Governor, Seyi Mankinde-backed faction of the erstwhile ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, amplified the speculation when it named the former President the party’s candidate in next year’s presidential election.

The move came a day after a former aide to former Vice President Namadi Sambo and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Umar Sani, claimed that Jonathan had already purchased a presidential nomination form ahead of the 2027 general elections.

A member of the faction’s presidential screening committee and the immediate past governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, explained, during the screening exercise for aspirants in Abuja, that Jonathan was granted a waiver from appearing before the screening committee because of his previous experience in public office, which, according to him, automatically qualified him for the election.

According to Babangida Aliyu, “the party had already given our presidential aspirant the waiver. Like I said in the beginning, he was deputy governor, became governor, became vice president, became president, so we didn’t see anything that needed screening, and therefore the party had given him a waiver. In other words, he had been declared and cleared as the candidate of the PDP for the presidential election, and that is President Jonathan.”

Ironically, the former Niger state governor was among the renegade PDP governors who rebelled against the party and President Jonathan in 2014, formed a faction known as new PDP or nPDP and aligned with the then fledgling All Progressives Congress, APC to defeat Jonathan in the 2015 election. On the other hand, the interim national chairman of the Mankinde- backed PDP, Kabiru Turaki, served as minister during the Jonathan administration and is considered the former Minister’s loyalist. The former president has however continued to maintain a sealed lips about his alleged entry into the 2027 presidential race.

In early May, a group of supporters and admirers thronging Jonathan’s Abuja residence to urge him to throw his hart into the presidential ring. Since 2019, the former President has endured flurry of calls to stage a comeback. He left office a decade ago but a plethora of Nigerians, including his erstwhile traducers who had vociferously vilified, castigated, threw tantrum at him and opposed him while he led Nigeria now appear nostalgic about his tenure and have stridently urged him to seek the office again.

In the run up to the 2019 general elections, a melange of groups and individuals had subjected Jonathan to intense pressure, urging him to join the fray and contest that year’s presidential election.

Similarly, before the 2023 presidential election, there were waves of calls on the former leader to contest the election. In furtherance of their agitation for his return to office, different support groups had flooded parts of the country, particularly Abuja with campaign posters bearing his picture. Just as some youths did early this month, a certain placards-wielding youth group had even stormed his Abuja residence passionately pleading with him to contest the presidency.

Some APC bigwigs equally wanted him picked as the party’s consensus candidate but Jonathan, being a gentleman and a team player who does not pollute the waters, stayed out of the race, opting to play the role of a stabilizer and an impartial elder statesman. The 2023 presidential election eventually panned out in favour of the incumbent, Tinubu who emerged president amid INEC’s collusion and rigging allegations.

However, in what many political pundits interpreted as part of the move by a section of Northern political establishment to lure the former Pesident into playing the spoiler role in next year’s presidential election, members of a hitherto unknown youth group, Coalition for Jonathan, had three weeks ago invaded his Abuja residence with placards pleading with him to contest the 2027 presidential election.

Evasive in his reply to the group, Jonathan said: “You are asking me to come and contest the next election. The presidential race is not a computer game. But I’ve heard you, and I’ll consult widely…. I cannot just wake up and say I want to be the president of Nigeria again. But I am telling you that I will consult. If there is a need to, I will wait.”

Though sources close to the former leader who spoke to Daily Sun on the condition of anonymity were optimistic that their principal will not succumb to what they described variously as a gambit and bait, if Jonathan eventually succumbs and become a candidate in next year’s presidential election, analysts argue, he would have played into the hands of elements in the core Muslim North plotting his presence on the ballot with the sole aim of using him to divide Southern votes thus handing victory to one of their own, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who is expected to run on the platform of the troubled African Democratic Congress, ADC.

The scenario that will confront voters next year, should Jonathan participate in the presidential election, pundits aver, will be four presidential candidates of Southern Nigerian extraction from the three geopolitical zones in the region (Southeast, South South and Southwest) – President Tinubu of the APC and Seyi Mankind of the APM; Peter Obi of the NDC and Jonathan of the PDP – squaring up against one another and in the process splitting Southern votes amongst themselves while a lone strong Northern candidate, Atiku squares up only against the incumbent – Tinubu.

In a free and fair contest, the voting pattern and results are predictable; Obi winning in the Southeast, Jonathan in the South South and President Tinubu in the Southwest leaving Atiku solely harvesting votes in the Northwest and Northeast and chunk of votes from Caliphate-aligned, Muslim majority North central states of Kwara, Niger and Kogi states while Obi, Jonathan and possibly Tinubu jostle for votes in Christian dominated Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna and Taraba states as well as Christian minority areas in North east and Northwest.

Make no mistake about it. An average core Northern Muslim voter, when push come to shove, will always give consideration to religious affiliation of a candidate before casting his or her vote, so the likelihood of them casting their lot with Atiku is high”, Dr. Eugene Ofem, a political scientist told Daily Sun.

On his part, Ejeh Monday Ejeh, a legal practitioner and public affairs analyst, believes that Jonathan will ruin his reputation if he allows himself to be used to truncate an eight-year Southern presidency by contesting the 2027 presidential election: “This is the handiwork of some northern politicians. For me, GEJ is being invited to be used as a pawn by some Northern politicians and he will be humiliated as a result. I advise him to refuse the temptation to be humiliated.

“Those urging him on want to use him to divide the votes from the South because even GEJ knows he will not win a Presidential election. He will not win. He will only be a spoiler, at the best. And this spoiler duty will destroy whatever name he has built for himself. My advice to GEJ is not to contest but maintain and sustain the image we marched out of the Villa with.

“This power must remain in South for the next four years and then it goes to the North for the next 8 years thereafter.”

Apart from a spoiler role, Jonathan’s eventual 2027 presidential candidacy will run counter to his wife, the former First Lady, Dr Patience Jonathan’s firm declaration last year during a function hosted by the First Lady, Senator Remi Tinubu in Abuja. She had told the First Lady that her husband was done with the presidency and would not run against President Tinubu next year.

Said the former First Lady: “All the way, we are with you. No shaking. We will follow. Direct us, and we will follow because there is only one President at a time. We don’t have two Presidents. I am outspoken—if I don’t like something, I will say it. But if I like something, I die with it.

“I believe in one President. I believe in turn by turn. When it’s your turn, I will support you. When it’s not your turn, step back so that the country can move forward. Even when my husband was the vice president, Oluremi stood with her husband and supported us during our first election. They supported us. So, for me, I have a conscience. I cannot abandon my friend, whether you like it or not.

“Because, you see, this is turn by turn. Today is my turn, I will go. Tomorrow, it will be another person’s turn, then we go. And when we go, will we still meet. Where will we meet? I don’t know.”

It however, does appear that President Tinubu’s camp is unsettled by the prospect of Jonathan being on the ballot for next year’s election. September last year when former Information Minister and PDP chieftain, Professor Jerry Gana emphatically declared that Jonathan would be on the ballot for next year’s presidential election, Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, in what many described as a panicky and desperate response, dismissed it as delusional, boasting that his principal will trounce the former President if he dared contest in the 2027. Onanuga suggested that the presidency will drag Dr Jonathan to court to determine his eligibility to contest having been sworn into office twice.

Meanwhile, amid permutations about the likelihood of Jonathan’s participation in the 2027 presidential election and the likely outcome, an impeccable source has told Daily Sun that the elements striving to drag the former leader into the 2027 presidential race are mulling a coalition between the little-known Allied People’s Movement, APM and the Kabiru- led PDP with the former President as flag bearer. This will entail Makinde who, a fortnight ago joined the race on the platform of the APM standing down for Jonathan.

It would be recalled that Bauchi State Governor, Bala Muhammed, a staunch ally of the former President has since defected from the PDP to APM and picked the party’s Senatorial ticket for Bauchi South. The governor who served as FCT Minister under Jonathan’s has often described the former President as his godfather and mentor.

Essentially, Jonathan’s political trajectory is defined by divine providence. An indigene of Otuoke in Bayelsa state, Dr Jonathan burst into political consciousness in1999 when in the Bayelsa State gubernatorial election, the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha ran for governor under the platform of the PDP and chose him as his running mate. Alamieyeseigha won the election and became the first civilian governor of the State in May 1999.The duo were reelected in 2003 and Jonathan’s diligence and loyalty to his principal earned him recognition as Nigeria’s most hardworking deputy governor.

However, on 9 December 2005, Deputy Governor Jonathan, was sworn-in as the substantive governor of Bayelsa State upon the removal of governor Alamieyeseigha by the Bayelsa State House of Assembly after being charged with money laundering in the United Kingdom.

In 2007, while still a sitting governor, Jonathan was selected by the PDP as a running mate to the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, himself a sitting governor too. Both leaders would later win the 2007 presidential election.

Vice President Jonathan (as he then was) would be named Acting President of Nigeria on 9 February 2010, following the novel doctrine of necessity invoked by the Senate due to President Yar’Adua’s trip to Saudi Arabia in November 2009 for medical treatment without formally handing over to him as required by the constitution.

In accordance with the order of succession in the Nigerian constitution, following President Yar’Adua’s demise on 5 May 2010, Jonathan, as Acting President, was sworn-in as the substantive president of the country on 6 May 2010. He contested the 2011 presidential election, won and was sworn-in as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed on May 29, 2011 becoming Nigeria’s 14th Head of State.

However, Jonathan lost his re-election bid in 2015 to late President Muhammadu Buhari of the then opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, and became the first Nigerian president to concede election defeat. The question now is, given the current political environment in Nigeria, will divine providence again swing Aso Rock for Jonathan if he decides to challenge the incumbent to an electoral duel? (The Sun)