Nigeria’s opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP, announced on Monday that it will name a presidential candidate by the end of May to run in elections scheduled for February next year, seven years after losing power.
Atiku Abubakar, a veteran politician and former vice president, is widely considered the front-runner to represent the opposition. If he runs for president, it will be his sixth attempt at the office.
When multi-party democracy was introduced in 1999, the PDP dominated Africa’s most populous nation, but President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress party threw them out in 2015.
President Buhari will leave office next year after serving two four-year mandates in a row.
According to the PDP’s election calendar, the presidential election primary will take place during a special convention from May 30 to June 1. Candidates for governors and members of the state legislature will be chosen before the convention.
Meanwhile, a political pressure group, Citizens Network for Peace and Development in Nigeria (CNPD), has called on the ruling party All Progressives Congress (APC) to adopt former President Goodluck Jonathan, as the party’s candidate for the 2023 presidential election.
The National Coordinator of the group, Mr Ralph Okorie, who made the call on Monday at a news conference in Abuja, urged President Muhammadu Buhari, to endorse the Jonathan project.
“There is a need for experience and continuity. The two enjoy the most cordial relationship that had ever existed between an incumbent and his immediate predecessor,” he said.