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All The Intrigues Revealed
In the last few weeks, the social media space and even the conventional media, have been awash with calls from different quarters demanding for former president Goodluck Jonathan to run for the presidency come 2027. This probably has never happened before. We just had a presidential election a little over a year ago. A winner emerged and we already have a president who has spent just a little over a year in office and there are calls already for some personalities to join the presidential race come 2027. And this, obviously, is happening because of the prevailing situation in the country.
No doubt, it has been a torid one year plus in office for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Possibly everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for his administration. There is unbearable inflation, unprecedented food crisis, fuel price has shot through the roof and the naira is at an all time low to the dollar. And all these was triggered by the removal of the fuel subsidy. The economy, clearly, has never looked this frightening. Many have concluded that the president has failed. But the president and his formidable team of Ministers and economic experts are confident Nigeria will turn the corner soon. After all, they argued, he has only been in office only a little over a year. Still, a lot of angry Nigerians believe a year is more than enough for him to have taken the country out of the woods if indeed he has the capability to do so, hence the call for Jonathan to come back to Aso Rock.
But political observers have noticed a trend in the call for Jonathan’s return. It is coming more from the Northern region. A lot of the political elites have been expressing their preference for Goodluck Jonathan. Political leaders from the North, which holds a huge chunk of Nigeria’s voting population, are working assiduously behind the scenes to convince former President Goodluck Jonathan to join the 2027 presidential race, City People can authoritatively reveal.
Sources with the knowledge of the plan said that recent comments by the Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, to the effect that he would not contest the election if Jonathan eventually caves in, said that the governor’s statement went beyond just flying a kite.
The game plan, it was learnt, became even clearer following the recent #EndBadGovernance nationwide demonstrations, which apparently showed serious disgruntlement by the voting population in the region with the Bola Tinubu-led administration.
City People learnt that the whole scheming to persuade the former Nigerian leader to join the race was already in top gear, even though Jonathan is non-committal at the moment.
However, when City People contacted the former President’s confidants on the move by northern leaders, they were hesitant to talk on the matter, but were honest enough to admit that there are indeed efforts to pressure Goodluck Jonathan to consider returning to Aso rock to complete his eight years in office. In the same breath, they insist the former President is focusing on his international assignments and humanitarian works rather than concern himself with potential run for President in 2027.”
A little over a week ago, the Bauchi Governor, Bala Mohammed, said that he will not contest for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket if the former president decides to run again.
But the source stated that the decision to sway Jonathan to agree to throw his hat into the ring went beyond party lines and affiliations, explaining that if Jonathan decides to participate, Nigerians will see how party affiliation will not be an issue.
Mohammed, a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory under Jonathan, who spoke after an event organised by a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Save Africa Initiative (SAI), had urged Jonathan to consider running for the presidency come 2027.
According to the governor, he said the former president has more experience and would do a good job if he had a second mandate to manage the country.
He said: “With regards to your call for me to present myself, I am still contemplating my chances as the leader of the opposition. I know there are good leaders within the People Democratic Party (PDP), especially my boss Goodluck Jonathan.
“I have always said that as long as Jonathan is around, I will not present myself for leadership of this country, unless he decides not to run. If we can persuade him to come forward, I will support him with my blood. Out of modesty, he is still not ready. I hope you will meet him and encourage him to run.
“He will do a better job because he has the experience. We know the prices of things; we know the level of inflation. His leadership recruitment was exemplary. We need leaders like him – young people with energy, foresight, and drive,” Mohammed argued.
Aside the fact that Jonathan is expected to govern the country for only one term, having done the first a term earlier, before his loss to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, the North is also considering that picking Jonathan will be a fair deal.
With Tinubu scheduled to end his first stint in Aso Rock by May 2027, the political permutation is that if Jonathan decides to contest, the South will have served out its eight years by 2031, given the unwritten understanding among Nigerian politicians to allow for rotation of the presidency between both regions.
Jonathan served as president from 2010 to 2015 after his then boss, Umar Yar’Adua died, before conceding defeat to Buhari after the 2015 polls.
While the last national protest was peaceful in the South, it was largely violent in the North, with some angry demonstrators going beyond the main reasons for the action to hoist the flag of a foreign country.
The violence that followed, many believe, was a blowout from the pent-up dissatisfaction with the current government, which they believe is the cause of the current hardship in the land.
Tinubu had after taking over the reins of power in May 2023, begun a slew of reforms, key among which were the ‘removal’ of fuel subsidy as well as the devaluation of the naira, as a result of the merging of the official and parallel FX windows. These policies have had very harsh economic impact on Nigerians.
According to the reliable source, during Jonathan’s regime, his government was largely inclusive, and addressed issues like the Almajiri system and creating initiatives for unemployed youths.
The Northern elite is also said to be disgruntled with the current administration because of what the source described as the loss of control of the levers of power in the country and the feeling of palpable helplessness.
The region is said to be comfortable with Jonathan because, according to the source, “they like and trust him because they benefitted from his government.” He maintained that if the Almajiri schools policy had continued, the number of out-of-school children would have reduced by now. “They see Jonathan as a safe bet,” he added.
He stressed: ”And because of the aftermath of the last national protest, they believe that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has lost ground across the North. So, that’s the problem.”
Buttressing this recently, the Dean of Borno Elders Forum, Prof Khalifa Dikwa, said members of the elite in the Northern region of the country were unhappy with Tinubu because of his “misfit and weak appointees” as well as his “anti-people policies”.
The political analyst, who spoke on national television, said the northern elite were “not happy because each of these policies affect the north entirely”.
He said: “Most of the appointees are either misfits or weak or to the wrong places,” adding that the appointments by the Tinubu administration were “lopsided”.
Dikwa added that even “the southern elite should be annoyed because Nigeria is more than Lagos”, describing it as “provocative”.
Some prominent northerners had also raised eyebrows following the decision of the federal government to relocate some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos.
In trying to refute the narrative, Vice President Kashim Shettima, said recently that there was no truth in the claim from some quarters that Tinubu was working against the interest of the North to cripple the region.
The Vice President spoke in Kano when he received a federal government’s delegation which visited to condole with him on the death of his mother-in-law. Shettima maintained that Tinubu was not against the North.
He argued that the fact that Tinubu appointed northerners as the Minister of Defence; the Chief of Defence Staff and the Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) put a lie to the claim that the president was biased against the North.
“At an appropriate time we will lay out facts that the president is not against the North as being championed by some disgruntled elements who always want to cause disaffection between government and the citizens,” the vice president said.
It remains to be seen now whether the former President Goodluck Jonathan will yield to these pressures as his supporters and admirers continue to root for him and demand for his return to politics.
– WALE LAWAL
(08037209290)
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