A political strategist and founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Professor Udenta Udenta, has said that President Bola Tinubu’s camp is panicking over a potential candidacy of former President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2027 election.
Speaking on Arise News, Udenta said based on trend analysis, the camp of President Tinubu has realised that if President Jonathan contests the 2027 election, they will have a problem.
He said: “They (Tinubu’s men) are worried about his coming, and they have done their mathematics. They’ve done their own evidence-based understanding of the situation.
“They have personally looked at the numbers to say, if he comes on board, what will likely be the deep challenges to our own person? And if that happens, what do we do? Do we simply write him off?
“They have the right to write him off and say, ‘We welcome you on board. Come on, President Jonathan, we’re going to smash through you and decapitate you politically.’
“But they didn’t do that. They are busy giving him excuses, giving him reasons why he shouldn’t contest. There was even a banner on the Nation Newspaper front page. That banner is: ‘Why President Jonathan will not contest in order not to break Southern unity.’
“The charge of Southern solidarity is resonating across the board. They know that if Jonathan comes on board, the Southern unity, the purported bogus, mythologised Southern unity, will be broken into pieces. They know that. And they know it too. They’re deep political players.”
Udenta said once Jonathan puts his hat in the ring, two zones in the South will be completely out of the reach of the APC in spite of the governors and other politicians at the top supporting the APC.
“And for the North, they will settle this dispute. That’s why PDP zoned it to the South. The North will settle this dispute. How will they settle this dispute?
“Anybody who has ears on the ground, who understands the tremors of politics and these tectonic shifts in the country today, will understand that the South is not with Tinubu but for former President Jonathan.
“For very good reasons. One, his liberal disposition, the fact that he conceded the election easily and walked away, he grew himself into a powerful global brand, into a powerful African leader, building consensus across nations, holding election meetings and so on, and then doing monitoring.
“And again, his record of service, far better than what we have today, even the past eight years of Buhari. So the North will take a similar decision.”
Udenta’s claim was supported by Mathias Baba Tsado, a former presidential aspirant of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) in the 2019 election.
Tsado, while appearing on AIT’s political Jigsaw, compared Jonathan to the biblical David, a man endorsed by God and loved by the people.
Continuing on his analogy of Jonathan and David, Tsado said: “If you remember the story of David in the Bible, when Saul was rejected by God, it was David, but David was not necessarily interested in becoming the leader, but the people in themselves said, Saul killed thousands, but David killed tens of thousands. And when that song started coming up, it was clear that at that point, Saul’s era was fading.
“I perceive something similar in President Goodluck Jonathan, that even going through his political trajectory, you discover that he has not been an overambitious man.
“But every time that Nigerians are faced with hardship, a difficult situation, his name comes up. And that’s to tell you that the people are missing him.”
On whether he thinks Jonathan will bow to the pressure from the people to throw his hat in the ring, Tsado responded: “I think he should. I think he loves this country.”
According to Tsado, Jonathan is a noble man, guided not just by the law but by his conscience.
“A lot of people are seeing now that truly former President Jonathan actually had love for them, and going on the streets of the North, I have realised that a lot of them are saying that it is President Goodluck Jonathan they want.”
