A group within the All Progressives Congress (APC) has advised the leadership and stakeholders of the ruling party against endorsing former President Goodluck Jonathan as the flagbearer of the party for the 2023 general elections.
The group, in a statement Monday in Abuja by its National Coordinator, Alhaji Danlami Babagana, warned that the emergence of Jonathan portended huge legal risk for the party and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the APC “Change Agenda” for Nigerians.
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The group reminded the party that former President Jonathan, having shared from late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s term and completed a full term, would be running afoul of the constitution if fielded as the party’s flagbearer.
He said: “The APC should struggle to avoid another legal conundrum as we set out for the elections; we don’t need another showdown with the judiciary.
“The candidature and likely emergence of former President Jonathan will be toxic for the APC owing to the acrimonious build up and the eventual circumstances in which the APC dislodged him from power in 2015.
“How then can anyone in the party and government conceive or contemplate the return of the same person who we insulted and vilified as our presidential candidate seven years after?
“Bringing him would mean a validation that PDP and APC are one and the same and are truly two sides of a coin.”