Jonathan’s Entry Would Radically Shake The 2027 Election

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“If Tinubu, Jonathan, Atiku, and Obi all contest, 2027 may become an electoral war of ethno-regional echo chambers, decided by razor-thin margins, in more ways than the 2023 election was”.

If the whispers from the smoke-filled inner rooms of northern political conclaves are to be believed, former President Goodluck Jonathan is being courted to return to the ring for the 2027 presidential bout. He may or may not be persuaded.

It is an irony too rich for fiction: some of the same northern political personages who orchestrated Jonathan’s ouster in 2015 now seek his resurrection for their own self-interested political salvation. Nigerian politics, as I’ve said before, is a theatre of paradoxes, with actors whose alliances are often dictated by the weather vane of self-preservation.

Contrary to popular misconception, which I also was once guilty of, Jonathan is not constitutionally barred from running for president in 2027. The 2017 constitutional amendment, which forbids anyone from taking the presidential oath more than twice, is not retroactive.

Jonathan’s tenure began in 2010 when he completed the remaining two years of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s term, then won election in 2011 before losing his re-election bid in 2015. The amendment came two years after his defeat. In law and logic, it does not apply to him.

Why the North is Wooing Jonathan

Northern political strategists are reading the national mood and seeing a path to reclaim power in 2031 without fracturing Nigeria’s fragile regional equilibrium. The consensus in the political weather forecast is that the South is entitled to eight uninterrupted years after Muhammadu Buhari’s northern presidency ended in 2023.

But President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s stewardship has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many northern power brokers. They suspect that, if given a second term, Tinubu will completely erode their political foothold in the federation’s power structures.

Faced with this, the North has two options. The first is to gamble on a formidable northern candidate, likely in alliance with the Southeast.

But Peter Obi remains a towering figure in the Southeast, and the dominant temperament in his political homeland is uncompromising: Obi as president or nothing. The thought of him playing deputy to a northerner is as politically palatable there as vinegar in palm wine.

Even if Obi doesn’t run for president in 2027 (because he seems to have no firm political base at the moment and might not have one even in 2027), it is doubtful that any other politician from the Southeast who is paired with a strong northern politician can produce a powerful counterweight to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The second, and far less risky, option is to back a southerner who is constitutionally shackled to a single term. This would guarantee a northern return to power by 2031.

Peter Obi’s public pledge to serve only one term if elected is seen as an empty promise born out of desperation. Power is intoxicating. Only few people have risen superior to its snares and allures.

Nigerian political history is littered with broken “gentleman’s agreements,” and Obi himself once swore eternal allegiance to APGA before defecting first to the PDP, then to the Labor Party, and most recently, to the African Democratic Congress (ADC). Power has a way of making even the sincerest pledges evaporate in the heat of incumbency and the joys of its perks and privileges. Northern politicians know this better than anyone.

Jonathan, however, is a different proposition. The constitution limits him to just one more term. For the North, he is the perfect political bridge. He is a southern Christian who is familiar with the rigors of the presidency but who is ineligible to seek a second term.

The Ironic Embrace

There is, of course, delightful irony in this potential alliance, as I pointed out before. Many members of the same cabal that hounded Jonathan out of Aso Rock in 2015 now court him for the sake of their own political continuity.

But the history of the Third Republic teaches us that northern political elites rarely sustain cordiality with the southern presidents they help enthrone. Both Olusegun Obasanjo and Bola Ahmed Tinubu can attest to that.

If Jonathan returns on northern wings, the question is not whether there will be turbulence, but how soon it will begin.

Jonathan’s Potential Nostalgia Vote

If Jonathan joins the 2027 race, his most potent asset may be that he’d benefit from what psychologists call rosy retrospection, which is the tendency for people to recall distant memories with undeservedly nostalgic feelings. Nigerians already romanticize the relative economic stability of Jonathan’s era, especially when contrasted with today’s spiraling costs of living.

Of course, this nostalgia ignores the economic reality that commodity prices would likely have risen under any administration, although we must admit that Tinubu’s double whammy of subsidy removal and naira devaluation precipitated the current never-before-seen cost-of-living crisis.

People wistfully recalling Jonathan’s years once similarly pined for Obasanjo’s. But in politics, perception trumps reality and feelings outweigh facts.

That said, there are some genuinely praiseworthy things Jonathan did when he was in power, which many of his critics, including me, acknowledge only with the benefit of hindsight.

For instance, his willingness to back down from unpopular policies after sustained outcries and protests, which we took for granted but which none of his successors has replicated, has stood him out.

The Southern Christian Vote

Jonathan’s entry would inevitably erode Peter Obi’s grip on the non-Yoruba southern and northern Christian voters, the very coalition that made Obi the darling of the 2023 race. Both men draw from the same well.

In 2023, Obi’s religious identity became a salient electoral currency in a contest that was more religiously polarized than any since 1999. Obi was the only notable Christian candidate. Should both appear on the ballot, their shared base would most likely split.

Jonathan could also pick up a share of northern Muslim votes, especially if he is backed by influential northern figures.

That advantage, however, is not guaranteed. If Atiku Abubakar contests again, as he seems poised to, Jonathan’s northern Muslim support could evaporate or at least be whittled down significantly.

Meanwhile, Tinubu remains the immovable object in the Southwest. In my August 13, 2022, column titled “Tinubu and Obi Will Either Affirm or Destroy These Two Theories in 2023,” I observed that, “The most time-honored fixity in Nigerian electoral politics since independence is the certitude that the Yoruba electorate will always overwhelmingly vote for a Yoruba candidate in national elective contests in which other candidates are non-Yoruba.

This proved true in 2023. If the political pulse I feel from the Southwest is a reliable indicator of the potential voting behavior of the electorate of the region in 2027, Tinubu would win even more votes from the region than he did in 2023.

Of course, many voters from the region won’t vote for him, but he is likely to have an enormously commanding lead there, nonetheless.

A Likely Runoff

If Tinubu, Jonathan, Atiku, and Obi all contest, 2027 may become an electoral war of ethno-regional echo chambers, decided by razor-thin margins, in more ways than the 2023 election was.

The constitutional requirement for victory, which is 25% of the vote in at least 24 states plus the FCT, would be a high hurdle in such a fragmented field. A runoff would be almost inevitable. Note that this prognosis assumes that the election would be free, fair, and transparent, which is never a guarantee.

If Jonathan does run and the election isn’t manipulated, he will redraw its map and force each major contender to recalibrate strategy. His candidacy would transform 2027 from a predictable two – or three-horse race into an unpredictable quadrangular brawl in which the past, the present, and the future of Nigeria’s presidency will all collide.