The PDP faction close to Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, has come out against any move to ratify former President Goodluck Jonathan as the party’s 2027 presidential candidate.
Led by their factional National Chairman Abdulrahman Mohammed, the group is telling Jonathan to publicly step away from the whole exercise.
The pushback landed just hours after a rival PDP faction, chaired by Kabiru Turaki SAN, ratified Jonathan as its candidate on Saturday.
Wike’s camp dismissed the ratification as a charade. They warned that linking Jonathan to what they called an unauthorised process risks harming both his democratic credentials and his political legacy.
Turaki’s faction had earlier given Jonathan a waiver. They cleared him as the sole aspirant in a screening exercise. Yet Jonathan never turned up for screening or the ratification itself. He has made no public statement about wanting to run.
The former president has stayed silent through every step. He has neither accepted the offer nor rejected it.
Wike’s side continues to argue that the PDP already finished its primaries for every elective office, including the presidency. They say Senator Sandy Onor’s name was the one sent to the Independent National Electoral Commission as the party’s candidate.
Anything the Turaki group is doing, they insist, is illegal and meant to mislead party members and the public.
“The former president should immediately distance himself from this charade and unauthorised attempt to drag his name into a process that lacks legitimacy,” the faction said.
They added that such moves could damage the integrity of the party’s democratic processes.
