President Goodluck Jonathan
President Goodluck Jonathan was on Thursday morning formally ratified as the presidential flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party for the 2015 general elections by the party national convention.
In his acceptance speech at the Eagle Square venue of the convention, he told the delegates and party officials that he had picked his “tested and loyal” Vice President, Namadi Sambo, as his running mate for the presidential election in February 2015.
The party faithful at the Eagles Square went wild with joy when the President made the pronouncement and added that he would confront corruption headlong if he was re-elected.
There had been speculations that the President could drop his deputy, who some had described as lacking electoral value in the North.
Though he was the sole aspirant, the party nonetheless ratified Jonathan’s candidacy by voting in accordance with the Electoral Act. At the end of the exercise, President Jonathan captured all the 2, 812 votes cast at the convention.
Those who showed interest in the race were either persuaded to drop their ambition or that the party refused to sell presidential nomination form to them.
For example, Dr. Abdul-Jhalil Tafawa-Balewa, who picked the form and was screened alongside President Jonathan for the primary, said he had stepped down for Jonathan.
But another presidential aspirant, Prof. Akasoba Duke Abiola, alleged that President Jonathan was using her presidential form to contest the 2015 election.
The party refused to sell presidential nomination form to her even though she paid the required nomination fees.
She insisted that she would not abide by the decision of the party to endorse President Jonathan as its sole candidate.
Although she has gone to court to challenge the decision of the party, Abiola while addressing journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, explained that even after paying her N2m nomination form, the party denied her the form.
Earlier, the convention had started with the duo of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Governor of Ebonyi State, Chief Martin Elechi, conspicuously absent at the national convention in Abuja on Wednesday.
Obasanjo, a former chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party, just released a book, in which he alleged that President Goodluck Jonathan was not competent to lead the nation.
Our correspondent gathered that the absence of the former President was also because of his belief that President Jonathan did not deserve a second term.
In his just-released book titled, My Watch, Obasanjo said that President Jonathan “is lacking in broad vision, knowledge, confidence, understanding, concentration, capacity, sense of security, courage, moral and ethical principles, character and passion to move the nation forward on a fast trajectory.”