Jonathan’s miserable déjà vu moment, by Ochereome Nnanna

As you read this, former president, Goodluck Jonathan (GCFR), may have swallowed the poisoned chalice of filing to run for president in 2027. As at yesterday, everything pointed in that direction. Indications were that he would run on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) faction led by Tanimu Turaki, his former Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs. Turaki was billed to head the committee to screen his former boss to stand as the sole candidate for that faction of the former ruling party. 

Did I just hear you say “déjà vu”? Indeed, we saw almost the same picture four years ago. From apparently out of nowhere, a faceless group of purported “Fulani herdsmen” volunteered to purchase the N100 million All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential expression of interest and nomination forms for Jonathan. It was widely speculated that former incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari, who snatched the presidency from Jonathan in 2015, wished to hand it back to him after consuming his 4+4 tenures. We were told that Buhari had suddenly seen the “goodness” in Jonathan that he was hitherto blind to.

As Buhari’s tenure neared its end, he wanted to give the presidency to Jonathan to complete his remaining four years and hand over back to the North. Buhari obviously did not want the touted “National Leader” of the APC, Bola Tinubu, to succeed him. When Jonathan failed to make it through the party, Buhari tried to foist then Senate President, Ahmed Maina Lawan, as the APC presidential candidate. However, Tinubu’s tight hold on the party machinery truncated Buhari’s plans and handed him the presidential ticket, which he went on to “win” with Buhari’s help.

Nigerians who had not believed the rumours of Jonathan’s intentions to run on the APC platform were dismayed when they saw photos of Jonathan meeting with Buhari’s man, Abdullahi Mohammed, who was the then National Chairman of the APC, in Mohammed’s office. When that plot collapsed, many Nigerians were relieved for two reasons. Jonathan was saved from the shame of being sponsored by the same people that hired and armed Fulani mercenaries from all over Africa and camped them in Zamfara forests to destabilise his government if Buhari had lost the 2015 election. That would portray him as a man who had no sense of personal dignity and shame and who was willing to mortgage Nigeria for personal political gain.

The second fear, for me, was what Tinubu would do if Buhari had succeeded in depriving him of his e mi l’okan, Yoruba l’okan (it is my turn, it is Yoruba turn). This was something he had sacrificed his personal party, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), created the propaganda that got rid of the PDP and applied all manner of manipulations of the judiciary to bring the APC to power, on the understanding that after Buhari, it would be his turn. Tinubu did not seem to me like a person who would just go home and forget all, if Buhari had sidelined him. 

This time around, Jonathan is apparently performing for another APC president who helped to depose him: Bola Tinubu. It was not until his 22nd April, 2026 visit to Tinubu in Aso Villa, Abuja that his renewed presidential ambition suddenly started trending. The fact that he was targeting a faction of the almost dead PDP kept tongues wagging: Jonathan must be part of Tinubu’s perceived plot to overload the opposition parties with multiple candidates against him in the presidential race. With Atiku Abubakar (ADC), Peter Obi/Rabiu Kwankwaso (NDC), Seyi Makinde (factional PDP/APM) and now Jonathan (factional PDP) against him and his 32 governors, the road to victory will be paved smooth with asphalt for Tinubu in January 2027. 

A vote for Jonathan will invariably be for Tinubu. Some have argued that Jonathan is eyeing to inherit the late Buhari’s fabled 12 million votes since most of those calling him back are said to be Buhari’s political orphans. If an otherwise experienced politician believes this, then his naivete is incurable. If it is not Buhari, it can’t be the same as Buhari. In any case, Buhari’s catastrophic performance had already lost him his “cult followers” so much that in 2019, he had to rely on the armed and security forces and his personally repackaged judiciary to snatch his re-election “victory”.

One thing that Jonathan can take to the bank is that he will have to run this time without the Igbo support that chiefly propelled him in 2011 and 2015. On both occasions, the Igbo nation, through Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, had officially withdrawn from vying for the presidency to enable Jonathan succeed. They not only voted for him more than they did any of their kinsmen in history, they carried his government on their shoulder when the North and West ganged up against him with the purest venom ever invoked in Nigerian politics. Their eggheads helped make Nigeria the richest country in Africa by GDP under his tenure (2014). If Jonathan had not chickened out to Northern and Amnesty International outcries and blackmail, COAS Lt-Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, was on the verge of wiping out Boko Haram in 2013.

There is an Igbo statement of fact that says: “when the right hand and left hand wash each other, both will be clean”. The Igbo nation has washed the hand of Jonathan, and by extension, that of his Ijaw ethnic group politically. Now that Peter Obi, Jonathan’s ardent supporter during his tenure has appeared as Igbo’s best chance to win the presidency, shouldn’t Jonathan and his kinsmen reciprocate? Will they only take and not give? I know that politics is a game of opportunity, not morality. But where is the opportunity for Jonathan in the 2027 presidential race? He will only become the joke of the season.

Is Jonathan’s laughable ambition worth more than his good name?

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