Speculations on whether or not President Goodluck Jonath an will run for office during the 2011 general elections may have ended, with one of his aides assuring he will announce his candidacy after the Muslim Ramadan fasting in September.
‘The President will certainly run and he will declare after Ramadan. He is fast ing along with us. He is right now fasting,’ the President’s adviser on National Assembly matters, Mohammed Abba-Aji told journalists in Abuja Tuesday.
Local newspapers speculated Wednesday that the declaration could be made on 14 or 15 September.
Abba-Aji’s statement is the clearest indication yet that Jonathan will run during the January 2011 elections, and may have ended speculations on his plans.
Jonathan took over as President following the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in May, after a long illness.
But under a ‘zoning’ arrangement by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in which the presidency is rotated between the North and the South, only northerners can run for president next year since Yar’Adua did not complete the two terms of four years each to which the North is entitled.
However, the party cleared the path for Jonathan, a southerner, to run next year when it decided recently that the President can run, even though the party’s zoning arrangement remains.
Former military President Ibrahim Babangida, former military Head of State Muham madu Buhari and and former Vice President Abubakar Atiku are among those seeking the country’s top post next year.
Meanwhile, the private Thisday newspaper announced Wednesday that President Jona than has appointed Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Dr. Dalhatu Tafida, as the Director of his campaign.
The report could not be independently verified.