By Dele Moses, Ilorin
Former Acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, has said that former President Goodluck Jonathan will disappoint chieftains of the All Progressives Party (APC) reportedly wooing him to contest next presidential election on the platform of their party.
Some chieftains of the APC including governors were said to have been making moves to make Jonathan contest the 2023 election so that he can succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in office.
Buhari had succeeded Jonathan in 2015 when the latter was defeated in his bid to be the president for a second term.
Jonathan who contested on the platform of the PDP accepted his defeat and peacefully handed over power to Buhari who four years later won a second term of office that would lapse by 2023.
The former president has always been a member of the PDP from where he rose from the post of a deputy governor to that of the president and he has not left the party.
However, he does not appear to wholeheartedly involve himself in PDP activities after he left office while some reports have said he felt betrayed by some leaders of the party with his loss in the presidential election.
The last governorship election of his state, Bayelsa, was won by the APC before the Supreme Court nullified APC’s victory on the ground of disqualification of the candidate’s running mate.
He has also maintained a cordial relationship with the incumbent president whom he visits at Aso Rock occasionally.
It is not however yet clear if the former president is being prevailed upon to defect to APC for the election or to contest under any other platform with the support of the people pushing for the project.
But, Kawu who said he was close to Jonathan and understood his principles said the former president would patiently listen to the APC chieftains but not be influenced by their advances.
He said: “Former President Jonathan is a coolheaded person, he listens calmly to everyone what he has to say but he takes his own decision. This is what happened during the 2015 elections when many of his aides were telling him not to concede victory to Buhari but unexpectedly he took his own decision.”
“The former president, don’t be surprised, may even at the end of the day be the one that will pull these people to the PDP instead of them making him to go to their party.”
Baraje said PDP believes in zoning of offices but has not decided the zone from where it would pick its next presidential candidate
He said a clue to this may be given at the next national convention of the party when a zone might have produced the next national chairman.
The former PDP boss cautioned on subjugation of party supremacy saying it puts the nation’s democracy in jeopardy.
He said relegation of party supremacy in favour of control by some influential individual members was one of the crisis bedevilling democracy in the country.
The politician who noted that before the Fourth Republic, there was party supremacy traced its absence now to the long military interregnum between the Second and Fourth Republic
He said President Obasanjo who came with military background did not also appreciate the importance of party supremacy despite the fact that the PDP in its manifesto recognises party supremacy.
Baraje explained that when he emerged the National Secretary of the PDP, supremacy of the party was promoted because the party then produced a President, Umaru Yar’Adua, who was a true democrat.