Members of the ruling All Progressives Congress on Thursday protested against rumoured plans to get former President, Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2023 election on the platform of the party.
The protesters, who belong to the APC North-South Patriotic Coalition of the party besieged APC’s national secretariat in Abuja, to declare their opposition to the plan to bring Jonathan, a member of the People’s Democratic Party, as their presidential flagbearer.
Numbering more than 100, the protesters carried banners and placards, denouncing the plant to field the former president, and argued that doing so would mean killing the party.
“The rumour has been around for some time now that former President Jonathan of the Peoples’ Democratic Party was being wooed by some power players within the APC to join the party and fly its presidential ticket for the 2023 elections,” the convener of the group, Alhaji Toyin Rahim, told journalists. He wondered how APC would be able to sell that proposition to the rank and file of the party.
He reminded the party leadership that Jonathan is someone that APC leaders in the past had labelled as corrupt and incompetent, and wondered how they plan to bring him back to power.
“What began as a mere rumour seems to be gathering momentum so close to the presidential primary of our great party. This Jonathan project cannot fly simply because it cannot help our party and we want to do our best to ensure that our party does not fall victim to any ill-advised action that can push the party out of power.
“One of the most telling negative implications of such an action is that the APC does not have anyone of electoral value who can win an election for us except we smuggle in a former president we defeated seven years ago for his glaring incompetence.
“In the APC today, there are presidential aspirants with credible pedigrees and humongous electoral value and capacity. It is not only unnecessary to smuggle Jonathan into our great party, it is also self-indicting and means that our party’s performance in office has been worse than an administration that Nigerians thoroughly rejected and voted the APC in 2015.”
Two weeks ago, a group that described itself as Jonathan’s supporters, besieged his office in Abuja, compelling him to run for the office he left in 2015.
The former President told the supporters to expect his response soon, explaining that things were being worked out.
