Why Jonathan Should Not Run in 2027 — Shehu Sani

Former federal lawmaker Shehu Sani has advised ex-President Goodluck Jonathan not to contest the 2027 presidential election, even though the constitution still allows him to serve one more term.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme, Sani explained that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which Jonathan used to win the 2011 election, is no longer the strong and united party it once was.

“Each time there is an election, the name of Jonathan comes up, but it is his volition to contest, but I advise him not to do that. The reason is very simple: the PDP he used to know is not the PDP now,” Sani said. “The PDP in the South-West is endorsing the president. Some members of the party are in the coalition. So, it is the party he used to know so he shouldn’t waste his time.”

Jonathan first became president in 2010 after the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, whom he had served as vice president. He was later elected in 2011 under the PDP but lost his re-election bid in 2015 to Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Although Jonathan still has a constitutional right to one more four-year term, he has not publicly declared any interest in returning to the race.

However, ahead of the 2027 election, discussions about his possible comeback have resurfaced, especially with debates around zoning, a one-term Southern presidency, and the formation of a new opposition coalition led by the African Democratic Congress (ADC).

Sani, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, also criticised the new coalition, arguing that its members are not different in ideology from President Bola Tinubu’s government.

“We are in a democracy, and it is within the right and ambit of our democratic experiment or law to have an opposition that will give an alternative, but if their only cause for power is to remove Tinubu without providing any alternative to governance and his style, then, they have no agenda,” he said.

“The people that constitute the coalition today are not ideologically and philosophically different from the programmes which the Tinubu administration is prosecuting. So, it’s not like we have a Marxist and a Capitalist or a Neo-Liberal and a Conservative. During their campaigns and in their dear lives, you can see those liberal values of devaluation and removal of subsidy and some other party.”