2023: How Lai Mohammed, Other Bashers Will Campaign For Jonathan

There appears to be unease in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) over plans to draft former President Goodluck Jonathan as the party’s 2023 presidential candidate with eyes on the campaign strategies to be adopted by the party’s chief propagandist, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

GreenWhiteGreen GWG reports that some prominent members of the APC including two northern governors are driving the Jonathan political project. 

The question many observers are asking is how a man who was highly demonized in 2015 by APC has suddenly become a beautiful bride  to fly the flag of the party in the 2023 presidential election.

President Jonathan and his campaign group had a tough campaign in the 2015 presidential election campaign as APC through its spokesperson, Mohammed tagged Jonathan’s regime clueless and made other derogatory remarks to de- market him before the voting public.

 In an extract from one of the interviews granted to Vanguard newspaper in 2015, Mohammed said,  “This administration is corrupt. All the people that surround the government have one story or the other. This is a President, when we handed over Nigeria to him, the country was in one piece, there was no single square metre that was occupied by terrorists. Today, over 22,000 square metre is being occupied by terrorist”.

The script by APC to lure Jonathan into the 2023 presidential election started some months ago. It will be recalled that Yobe State governor and immediate past chairman of the APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee, Mai Mala Buni, last year, led a delegation of members of his CECPC and certain governors on a courtesy visit to the former president.

Amidst speculation that Jonathan was trying to dump the PDP for the APC, his aide told journalists that time that the APC governors merely visited the former president to felicitate him on the occasion of his birthday.

Also, former secretary of CECPC- John James Akpanudoedehe, was elated over the rumoured news of Jonathan’s joining APC some months ago. , “I am hearing that for the first time that we are expecting the former President. That will be great news. We will welcome him; that will also strengthen the party.”

The sudden change in the party may not be only for the interest of Jonathan. Analysts believe the courting of Jonathan this time may be to serve the interest of some cabals, as his coming to power in 2023 if elected would be for a single term after which they can have the power back.

The poser for many is how Lai Mohammed and other bashers will campaign for Jonathan, the man they originally termed as clueless? For the information minister who has now been put on edge in Kwara State over the attack on his structure by Governor Abdulrahman Abbdulrazaq, the potential entry of Jonathan could only add to additional emotional stress.

Whatever, it is expected that if the plan goes through that the one time bashers of Jonathan would dress him up as a victim of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

Jonathan, like Godswill Akpabio, Abdullahi Adamu and several others who were once investigated for corruption would be given the all sins forgiven label and be enrobed as a saint and may even be joined on the rostrum by Joshua Dariye and Jolly Nyame, two former governors convicted for corruption but recently pardoned by President Muhammadu Buhari.

For Lai Mohammed and other bashers of Jonathan in the past, the new campaign if it unfolds would, however, always be laced with irony.

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