Although former President Goodluck Jonathan is playing a hide-and-seek in his intentions to return to power, he however received a huge boost as the Federal High Court in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State on Friday affirmed that he can contest for the 2023 presidential election.
With this pronouncement, his last legal hurdle to return to power, appears to have been removed even as he will now be part of the severally postponed screening of the presidential candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The presiding judge, Justice Isa Hamma Dashen who delivered the judgement on Friday also held that Jonathan’s right to vie for the Office of President of Federal Republic of Nigeria again cannot be stopped by any retroactive law.
Jonathan, who was elected as Vice-President alongside the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007, was inaugurated as President in 2010 following the death of Yar’Adua.
In 2011, he ran for election and was again inaugurated.
In 2015, while running for another term, the courts ruled that Jonathan was eligible to contest as his first inauguration was done to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure.
However, in 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Fourth Alteration of the 1999 Constitution which bars Vice-Presidents who succeed their principals from serving more than one full term.
It is being speculated that there are strong indications that the former President is the preferred candidate of some powerful APC chieftains from the North, including the incumbent President and a grand plot is being woven around that to make the consensus candidate for the party.
About 48 hours to the primaries to choose its presidential candidate for the 2023 election, the ruling party is yet to screen the aspirants, who were made to cough out a whopping N100million non-refundable few for its expression of interest forms.
However, this is interpreted as part of the plot to hoist the former President, who was removed from office by the same APC, after getting Nigerians to believe that his government of six years, was the worst the nation had ever experienced, a development, which has put those now rooting for him in a sort of quandary.
On his part, Jonathan and his minders have not openly accepted he is running.
Mr. Ikechukwu Eze, his Media Aide in a statement he issued last when a group which calls itself Myetti Allah said they have purchased the APC presidential forms for Jonathan, denied asking anyone to purchase forms for the ex-president.
Eze equally said that Jonathan thanked another group of Nigerians who offered to purchase forms for him, saying he has not made up his mind, but was pursuing peace across Africa.
As his name keeps resonating in the ruling APC, especially with the submission of his forms, which nobody can evidently say he signed personally, and with the court verdict, tongues are wagging that Jonathan may be the APC’s apple card.
