PDP considering Jonathan, Obi for 2027 presidency, Bauchi gov confirms

THE chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum, Governor Muhammed Bala of Bauchi State, on Thursday, indicated that the party is considering former President Goodluck Jonathan and the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, for the 2027 presidency.

The assertion by the Bauchi governor came amid speculations that both Jonathan and Obi are under intense pressure to return to the PDP.

“But certainly, (former) President Jonathan is one of the candidates we are thinking of, if he joins us and opens his mind to run. And even other people like (former) Governor Obi, because if he decides to come to a better platform where there are no encumbrances, he will be given the opportunity too,” the governor said.

He described Jonathan as one of the “most celebrated politicians.”

Jonathan, who held sway as president until 2015 when he lost as PDP candidate to the late President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was acting president and later substantive president following the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua after a protracted sickness in a London hospital.

On the other hand, Obi, a two-term governor of Anambra State, was the running mate to the 2019 PDP presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, before he defected to the Labour Party to pick its presidential ticket for the 2023 elections.

Muhammed Bala, who featured on Politics Today, a personality interview programme on Channels Television, on Thursday, predicated the defeat of the party in the 2023 elections to its decision to throw its presidential ticket open, instead of ceding it to the South.

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He said the 2023 experience was part of the learning curve for the PDP and that the party would not allow history to repeat itself.

On Monday this week, the PDP resolved at its 102nd National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting to zone its presidential ticket to the South. The choice of former Vice President Atiku as PDP candidate in the last general election led to cracks within the PDP with two distinct camps working across purposes after the national convention, which dovetailed into the presidential poll.

A group of five PDP governors under the tag G-5, led by the then Governor of Rivers State and now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, vehemently opposed the choice of Atiku.

Recalling the issues that trailed the decision of the PDP not to concede the ticket to the South, Governor Mohammed Bala said:

“Life is always a learning process. When we did it [throwing the ticket open] in 2023, it was not a pleasant experience, and that was why we lost, and I discovered to my surprise that the presidency is a consensus phenomenon. You cannot impose yourself on anybody or any group.”

Wike, who was the runner-up in the PDP primary, and his group decried the inherent injustice since there was a mutual understanding of power rotating between the North and the South for political convenience.

Recall that the then President Muhammadu Buhari, who hailed from Katsina State in the North, was on the last lap of his two terms of four years each constitutionally allowed in office.

Justifying the paradigm shift of the PDP on the 2023 arrangement, Governor Mohammed was confident that the zoning of the presidency to the South by PDP will bolster and strengthen the chances of the party in the 2027 election.

“When my party decided that we would zone this [ticket] to the South, I had no qualms because I knew it was for the common good and not about personal interest,” he said.

The governor, who said he has shelved his initial plan to run for the presidency in the interest of the party and the country, said: “We have learnt our lessons from the mistakes we made in the past.” He also said his party was not ready to have same-faith ticket in apparent reference to the APC scenario in 2023.

The former minister of the FCT added that since Tinubu is about to finish his first term, the PDP needed somebody “strong or stronger than him from the South to give him a fight for his life because the government of the day is not working very well!”