Former lawmaker Shehu Sani has cautioned former President Goodluck Jonathan against returning to contest in the 2027 election.
Speaking on Sunday, August 17, on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Sani said the Peoples Democratic Party, which Jonathan once used as his political platform, is no longer united.
“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.
He added, “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, who became president in 2010 following the death of Umaru Yar’Adua, was elected in 2011 and remained in office until 2015, when he lost to Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress.
Though the constitution allows him one more four-year term, Jonathan has yet to show interest in running again.
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Still, speculation about his possible return has been growing, particularly amid talks of a one-term Southern presidency and the formation of a new opposition coalition by the African Democratic Congress.
Sani, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, also expressed doubts about the coalition’s credibility, saying its members lack distinct political ideology.
“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.
He continued, “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.”