Former federal lawmaker, Shehu Sani, has urged ex-President Goodluck Jonathan not to recontest the presidency in the 2027 elections.

Sani, who spoke on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, argued that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which Jonathan used to clinch the presidency in 2011, is no longer the same.

Naijaonpoint reports that the former Kaduna Central Senator said Jonathan should not waste his time returning to the political race because the PDP has lost cohesion.

Sani said, “Each time there is an election, the name of Jonathan comes up, but it is his volition to contest, but I advise him not to do that. The reason is very simple: the PDP he used to know is not the PDP now.

“The PDP in the South-West is endorsing the president. Some members of the party are in the coalition. So, it is the party he used to know so he shouldn’t waste his time.”

Jonathan, who served as Vice President under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, assumed office on May 6, 2010, after Yar’Adua’s death. He was later elected on the PDP platform in 2011 and ruled until May 29, 2015.

He contested for re-election in 2015 but was defeated by Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Although constitutionally eligible for one more four-year term, Jonathan has not declared any interest in recontesting.

Ahead of the 2027 polls, discussions about Jonathan’s possible return have gained momentum within political circles, particularly in conversations about zoning a one-term presidency for the South. The emergence of a new opposition coalition, recently floated by the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has also fuelled the debate.

Sani, however, dismissed the opposition coalition, saying it lacked apparent ideological differences from President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

He said, “We are in a democracy, and it is within the right and ambit of our democratic experiment or law to have an opposition that will give an alternative, but if their only cause for power is to remove Tinubu without providing any alternative to governance and his style, then, they have no agenda.

“The people that constitute the coalition today are not ideologically and philosophically different from the programmes which the Tinubu administration is prosecuting. So, it’s not like we have a Marxist and a Capitalist or a Neo-Liberal and a Conservative.

“During their campaigns and in their dear lives, you can see those liberal values of devaluation and removal of subsidy and some other party.”