Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan will next month announce his intention to run in the 2011 general elections, ending speculations on whether or not he will run.
The local media reported Wednesday that the President’s decision to run followed the report of a committee he set up on the issue.
Information that he will soon announce his candidacy came on the same day that a foreign news agency reported that the President has decided not to contest in the presidential poll. The presidency quickly denied the report.
‘Information at our disposal indicates that this is a story sponsored by inter ested parties. Unfortunately, the highly rated global news agency was misled into publishing it,’ presidential spokesman Ima Niboro said in a stateme nt Tuesday.
‘The truth is that the president has not said he will not run. Neither has he said he will,’ the spokesman said.
Jonathan, a Southern Christian, took over after President Umaru Yar’Adua, a Nort hern Muslim, died 11 May 2010.
But a power pact by his ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), under which the presidency is rotated between the North and the South, precludes a Southerner from running for the presidency until 2015, when the north would ha ve served out its two terms of four years each.
In an ambiguous decision last week, the PDP retained the ‘zoning’ pact but said Jonathan was free to run.
However, the presidency has stopped short of confirming that President Jonathan will announce his candidacy next week.
‘At the appropriate time, the president will inform his country men and women of his future plans. Until then, every comment on the subject remains mere speculation,’ Niboro said.