By Palladium
One of the stories that dominated the media last week was the noisy whisper about drafting ex-president Goodluck Jonathan for the 2027 presidential race on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
In Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed spoke in Abuja about his speculated interest in the race, but sighfully suggested he would step down if Dr Jonathan declared interest. Mr Mohammed, PDP governors’ forum chairman, is one of the leading lights of the PDP. Since he flew the Jonathan kite, a number of PDP top hats have lent their voices to the call to draft the former one-term president. In their calculations, Dr Jonathan would fit the northern bill of finding a southerner to take the South’s second term in place of the disfavoured President Bola Tinubu.
The self-appointed PDP spokespersons assume naturally that they speak for the entire North, despite the insurmountable presence of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the region. They also flagrantly discountenanced the 2018 constitutional amendment on term limit or the legal interpretation of Section 137 (3) of the 1999 Constitution.
Even if he likes to run, it is hard to determine how he can. But the nation can indulge the political romantics who think that in Nigeria everything is possible.
In 2022, despite constitutional provisions and months before the PDP and APC primaries, Dr Jonathan was rumoured to be interested in contesting the presidency on the platform of the APC, a rumour engendered and nurtured by his dithering over the race.
The prospect tantalised the former PDP president, and he gave audience to a few APC/northern delegations bent on drafting him. But he also waffled over whether he would run or not run, hinting obliquely that he could embrace a draft only if he was made the consensus candidate. He said nothing about the constitution. Perhaps he and his supporters know something Nigerians don’t know. In the end, despite a group of northerners buying the N100m expression of interest form for him, and despite his brutal sense of caution, he allowed the process to dissipate itself.
Today again, he is embroiled in a cynical presidential draft game by another group of PDP big wigs. It would be out of character for him to dismiss the speculation out of hand, especially this time because the speculation comes from his natural watering hole, the PDP. And why would he not want to be the cynosure of all eyes even when he knows his ignorant drafters are engaged in a fool’s errand?
Dr Jonathan has matured into statesmanship. He may, therefore, be wiser today than when he presided over Nigeria. He remembers quite well that in 2015, the North repudiated him in favour of their son, Muhammadu Buhari, who went on to win the presidential election. Indeed, he probably watched as they nearly repudiated Candidate Bola Tinubu in favour of their son, Alhaji Atiku, who flattered their northernness and baited their primordial instinct. And in 2022, Dr Jonathan also probably recognised that fearful northerners chary of being out of the presidency for eight years plotted to use him to hold the reins for only four years. He vacillated in 2022, briefly succumbing to the blandishments of APC mandarins who thought to use him to thwart the wider objective of rotational presidency and a fundamental change of direction after ex-president Buhari had run the country aground. If Dr Jonathan feels humiliated to be seen only as a tool for thwarting noble goals and putting political leaders’ noses out of joint, he has been careful and cautious not to say anything so far. In 1998, when northern and military schemers thought to offer ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo the presidency, he was pretentious enough to ask how many presidents they wanted to make out of him. His question was rhetorical. Soon, as events later proved, he eagerly seized the opportunity, won the election, and even sought to outfox God by scheming for a third term.
There is nothing in Dr Jonathan’s rule book that shows him up as a hypocrite like Chief Obasanjo. But he won’t run for the presidency if he is not certain he would win the nomination, get the backing of the law, and of course go on to win the main election. Unlike Chief Obasanjo, he is averse to risk-taking. To run for the coveted post, he would have to take the nomination consensually after the constitutional conundrum is resolved, and be sure that the APC had become so discredited nationally that a freshman politician from any party could win by a landslide. And of course, finally, he would have to be sure that his conscience does not trouble him to be seen as a tool in the hands of northerners disenchanted with President Tinubu. The drafter engineers may flatter him to no end, but he will have to be certain that their rhapsodies hold a ring of truth beyond deploying him as a political battering ram. Indeed, the northern PDP big wigs have begun to compose dulcet hymns about him and the generally uneventful time he spent in office. But he can never be sure how inelastic their sweet tongues are when they strain the truth and veer into flattery and lies. So, for now, he will watch the composers and drafters with quivering amusement, waiting to see which way the cats jump.
Moreover, the former president is not an idiot to think that former vice president Atiku Abubakar would in a year or two suddenly become a non-factor. When Alhaji Atiku engages in political fights, he bites ears, scratches faces, thumb noses, and gives headbutts. To the former vice president, truth is a mistress to be ravaged, as his continuing fight with President Tinubu has revealed, and he does his battles with undiluted ferocity and bitterness. An aspirant, particularly of the dovish kind like Dr Jonathan, must wear armour designed by archangels to fight the battles the entrenched party behemoths will bring against him. Unfortunately for him, since losing the 2015 presidential election, he has played little or no role in the survival of the party to this day. Alhaji Atiku himself has of course been opportunistic and Machiavellian, completely undeserving of the attention the PDP still gives him, but Dr Jonathan has been nothing more than a cipher in the existence of the opposition party. For a party orphaned since 2015 and suckled by surrogates like Nyesom Wike, former Rivers State governor and current FCT minister, it is deeply ironical that estranged ‘fathers’ are fighting for the baby’s attention as another election beckons in the distance.
The truth about the PDP is, however, more disconcerting than the attention being paid to the speculated interests of Dr Jonathan and Alhaji Atiku. As it stands, the opposition party does not stand any chance of winning the presidency if elections were held today or tomorrow. The reasons are clear. The party lost in 2015 because of the cumulative damage done to the party by all three PDP presidents, starting with Chief Obasanjo who introduced so much instability into the running of the former ruling party. After the PDP lost the presidency that watershed year, no one of enough intellectual heft or character has been able to conduct a proper laparotomy on the party to diagnose why it lost power, not to talk of repairing the breaches. Instead of remaking the party’s platform and positioning it ideologically or even emotionally to appeal to Nigerians, party apparatchiks have focused on the personalities of their political suitors, men with money but no principles, men capable of raising a storm but impatient to take the wind when they see or feel it.
Secondly, and more sobering for the party, neither the embittered and immensely self-centered Alhaji Atiku nor the dour and humourless Dr Jonathan is capable of swinging victory for the PDP. It is not even clear that either of them will be in a position to campaign in 2026, let alone run for the post. The APC administration is despised and blamed for the hardship and hunger pervading the country by a people long accustomed to gorging on national surplus, but the economy will very likely yield to medications soon, and by the end of 2025 probably roar back to life. All the indications are there, despite the string of unforced errors committed by the Tinubu administration. The PDP will not only have to redesign their platform and imbue it with strength and character, they will also have to find credible and committed leaders to fly their tattered flag. The party is already shaping up for a bruising battle for its soul. Whatever the outcome of that internecine battle, it is unlikely the wounds will heal on time for the next election, regardless of the North’s speculated loss of confidence in the Tinubu administration.
Culled From The Nation
