Former lawmaker Shehu Sani has urged ex-President Goodluck Jonathan to resist calls for another presidential run in 2027, warning that the political party that once carried him to power no longer exists in the same form.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Sani said Jonathan’s name resurfaces before almost every election cycle, but the conditions that once favoured him have shifted. “The PDP he knew is not the PDP today,” he remarked. “In the South-West, the party is endorsing the president. Others have joined coalitions. It’s a different structure entirely.”
Jonathan, who assumed office in 2010 after the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and later secured a full term in 2011, presided over Nigeria until 2015. His tenure ended in defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, making him the first sitting Nigerian leader to lose at the ballot box. Constitutionally, he remains eligible for one more term.
The prospect of his return has recently gained momentum amid debates on zoning and the rise of a new opposition coalition championed by the African Democratic Congress. However, Sani cast doubt on whether such alliances amount to a credible alternative.
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“We are in a democracy, so opposition is welcome,” he said. “But if their only cause is to remove Tinubu without offering a different vision, then there is no real agenda. The people in that coalition are not ideologically different from the programmes Tinubu is already implementing.”
That critique cuts to the heart of Nigeria’s political culture, where coalitions often emerge less from ideological conviction than from tactical convenience. For Sani, Jonathan’s re-entry would risk being absorbed into the same currents that have left the PDP fragmented and weakened.
Jonathan himself has not indicated interest in a comeback. But in the absence of new and convincing political actors, speculation about his return persists — a a suggestion of how much Nigerian politics remains bound to its past, even as the country faces challenges that demand a clearer vision for the future.