Who Is Tanimu Turaki Fighting For?

Tanimu Turaki, chairman of the opposition PDP, is a thorn in the flesh of INEC, the ruling party, and the judiciary.

Turaki served as Minister of Special Duties under the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan. The moment he replaced Iliya Damagum, it was all but certain who the PDP presidential candidate would be.

But there are genuine questions about whose interests Turaki is actually fighting for ahead of the 2027 presidential election.

Is it Jonathan and his constitutional right to vote and be voted for, the PDP, which needs to be on the ballot to survive beyond 2027, the North, which has only one candidate in the race, the South-South, which Jonathan represents, or the electorate and their right to choose?

Turaki wants Goodluck Jonathan on the 2027 ballot. The party wants Jonathan to run so badly that it manually submitted the former president’s name to INEC.

Other parties were given codes to upload their candidates’ names via online portals opened by the commission.

The presidency and the ruling APC do not want the former president to contest the election for obvious reasons. Whether because of its interpretation of recent Supreme Court rulings or simply because its neutrality is uncertain, INEC also does not want Jonathan on the ballot.

The electoral commission is in a bind over Jonathan’s candidacy. He has become the litmus test of INEC’s supposed independence, the separation of powers, and the credibility of the electoral process.

Whether Jonathan gets on the ballot or not is also putting the judiciary in a difficult position. The Supreme Court has effectively dismissed the PDP faction backed by FCT Minister Nyesom Wike.

The minister has made it clear: he is fighting for President Tinubu, the APC, and the Southwest.

But INEC is apparently waiting for the Court of Appeal to affirm that ruling before deciding which faction of the PDP to recognise and who gets to be the party’s presidential candidate.

It is, however, not difficult to see why President Bola Tinubu does not want Jonathan running in the 2027 presidential election. The former president could draw a significant number of votes from the South-South.

It is bad enough that Peter Obi’s candidacy in the NDC will likely sweep votes in the Southeast and possibly deny the APC 25 per cent of the votes in the region.

And, as in the 2023 presidential election, Obi could also take votes away from Tinubu in the Southwest, the president’s stronghold.

So while three southern candidates split the votes of the East, West, and South-South, the ADC presidential candidate could have free rein in the North.

Four major candidates from four regions of the country could distort the APC’s electoral calculus.