Former President Goodluck Jonathan and Peter Obi, the 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate, have been touted to the north as alternatives to President Tinubu and the APC in the next general election.
However, for two important reasons, the north may support the former president ahead of Peter Obi if they both contest against President Tinubu in the 2027 election.
Amid the controversies, Peter Obi, who made a statement during the 2023 presidential election, gathered over eight million votes in the poll. He has been making moves for a stronger alliance against President Tinubu in the 2027 election.
On the other hand, the call on former President Goodluck Jonathan to join the race has been gaining momentum, particularly from the northern bloc. This is as some southern leaders have urged the former president to remain a statesman.
Omotayo Yusuf, a political analyst, in an exclusive interview with Legit.ng, explained that though the call for Jonathan to join the 2027 election is interesting, but maintained that it would be honourable for the former president to remain an elder statesman rather than joining the contest.
He said: “At the moment, he (Jonathan) seems to be a significant political player in Nigeria’s political atmosphere. But I don’t think that running for the presidency is the next big thing he should do. I probably would even suggest that it would be better for him to be an elder statesman and quit active politics altogether.”
At the moment, the north has an option between Peter Obi and former President Goodluck Jonathan as the alternative to President Tinubu in the 2027 election. However, the region may prefer the latter to the former for two reasons.
Single-term presidency: Jonathan has been a one-term president and only has the constitutional right to contest once again. This means that if Jonathan contests in the 2027 election, he would not be seeking re-election in the 2031 election, and power would easily return to the north.
Unlike Obi, who has never been president before. His promise to be a single-term president was not taken seriously by many in the Northern Bloc, and the region may experience difficulty in regaining power in 2031.
Political loyalty and credibility: Jonathan has more political credibility and loyalty than Obi. The former president started his political journey with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and has remained in the leading opposition.
Even when he was betrayed by some bigwigs in the party and was voted out as the first sitting president in Nigeria, he neither dumped the party to seek his second-term ambition elsewhere nor worked against the PDP publicly.
This is contrary to the political trajectory of Peter Obi, who has moved from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to the PDP, the Labour Party, and now swinging between the PDP and the coalition adopted African Democratic Congress (ADC).
