A faction of Peoples Democratic Party [PDP], once Nigeria’s political juggernaut, I hear, has nominated former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as its presidential candidate in next year’s presidential election. There was no primary during which the nomination was given. Jonathan, we also understand, didn’t buy the party’s millions naira worth nomination form. And as happened in 2023, the former president hasn’t said he has accepted to be the faction’s flag bearer. Or whether or not he is in the race at all. In fact, it has been mum on his part so far. However, in case, he is considering tossing his hat in the ring, here is my honest advice. I refer him to the chorus of the song “Don’t be a fool” by Shawn Mendes. Here Shawn is talking about romance; he is telling his partner not to waste her time with him but to “move on”. Politically , I’m telling Jonathan don’t be a fool.
Recal, Jonathan was president for almost seven years. Firstly, he completed the remaining two years of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s first term after he died. Then in 2011, Jonathan contested the presidency in his own right and won comfortably. But he lost reelection in 2015 to the retired General Muhammadu Buhari, who went on to be reelected in 2019. Jonathan’s presidency was unarguably a disaster, moreso due to his naivety, which itself was a result of political inexperience. Take in this one incident, for example. Addressing his party, PDP’s campaign dinner in 2014, Jonathan announced jubilantly that PDP, more than any party before it, had produced “so many billions in a very short time.” He didn’t say how the party did it but everyone outside the hall knew how: patronage and arrant corruption. A hefty N60 billion was raised during the dinner. Jonathan distributed the fund to those the party named to handle his reelection campaign, including the party chairman at the time Alhaji Ahmed Musa Mu’azu, who was also governor of Bauchi State for two terms. They pocketed the money and failed to campaign for the president. Not surprisingly, he lost the election. Naivety and inexperience undid him. However, something he did after his loss catapulted him to the world stage. Jonathan went against his party, conceding defeat to Buhari in 2015. Up till today, he is respected globally as the Messiah of Nigerian democracy.
It is this reputation that some politicians want Jonathan to risk. They want him to reenter the race for president in 2027. No doubt, Jonathan has matured politically in the 10 years he has been out of office. But presidential material still? Na! na!!. His coming from a Southern minority is a huge minus. He hasn’t built a political machine of his own. Another minus. Can he get any of the big three ethnic groups to offer him a base? Forget it. What more, the experiences of Gowon and Ojukwu should tell him this is something he shouldn’t dare do. Gen. Yakubu Gowon was head of state 1966-75. He was overthrown in a palace coup in 1975 while out of the country. In 1976 he was implicated in a failed coup that, however, killed Gen. Murtala Mohammed, who had replaced him as head of state. What saved him was that he was in Uganda at the time of the coup and so couldn’t be brought back to the country to stand trial.
In 1983, the new president Shehu Shagari granted him pardon and restored his military rank. Not understanding the political terrain, he was “encouraged” to run for president in 1991 but lost badly to a lesser known medical doctor Dalhatu Tafida in the primaries. Odumegwu Ojukwu was Gowon’s military contemporary, who decided to take his Igbo kinsmen out of the country to have a country of their own named Biafra. The secession attempt led to a civil war, which Ojukwu lost and went into self exile in Ivory Coast. In 1983, Shagari also pardoned him to gain political traction in the East. On his return, he ran for Senate but, like Gowon, he lost. That shock electoral defeat pulled him out of partisan politics until his death in 2011. Gowon is still alive but has dared enter politics again. He would recount that political debacle in detail in his autobiography “My Life of Duty and Loyalty”, formally presented in May in Abuja. It is a lesson for any sensible person not to trust people whose real intention isn’t open. GEF should wait to read the political currents to know whether or not a dive will take him over to other bank of the river. out of politics. Jonathan will do well to take a leaf from Gowon’s story and never to throw his hat into the political ring. Not yet.
