A faction of the Peoples Democratic Party led by Kabiru Turaki says it will hold a special national convention in Abuja on Saturday to ratify Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as its sole presidential candidate for the 2027 election.
The move puts Jonathan back at the center of a party fight that has now spilled into a formal nomination battle. The Turaki-led group disclosed the plan in a statement signed on Thursday by Ini Ememobong and Theophilus Shan, and said it would proceed even though Jonathan had not publicly said whether he accepted the nomination.
The urgency is tied to the date. The faction has set the gathering for Saturday, 30 May 2026, at A Class Event Centre in Wuse 2, Abuja, and says the ratification will go ahead as scheduled. Jonathan, who served as Nigeria's vice president from 2007 to 2010, became substantive president in 2010 after the death of Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. He later won the 2011 presidential election on the PDP platform before losing his re-election bid in 2015 to Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress.
The group first announced Jonathan's adoption as its sole candidate two weeks ago and says he was granted a waiver from appearing before the screening committee because of his earlier service in public office. That argument lands in the middle of a legal and political dispute over whether he can seek the office again. A Federal High Court in Yenagoa ruled in 2022 that Jonathan remained eligible to contest, but the faction pushing him is still not recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
That lack of recognition is the point of friction. The Turaki faction says the convention will proceed, while the Wike-backed PDP says no such convention has been scheduled, approved or endorsed by any recognised organ of the party. In its statement, Ememobong said the group had completed the steps needed to move forward and had notified security agencies about the event, adding that any attempt to use force to suppress political dissent would be resisted. Jungudo Mohammed, meanwhile, urged Jonathan to publicly dissociate himself from what he called a charade in order to protect the credibility he earned in office.
Whether Jonathan embraces the nomination, rejects it or stays silent now becomes the central question. For the Turaki faction, Saturday is meant to turn a factional endorsement into a formal candidacy. For the rest of the party, it is a test of whether a disputed convention can produce a claim to the 2027 race at all.
