As moves to draft former President Jonathan into the 2027 presidential race continues, investigations have shown that there might as well be a major legal hurdle for the former president to cross.
Following the acrimony and tension that greeted Jonathan’s desire to run in 2015, after first completing the late Umaru Yar’Adua’s tenure from 2010 to 2011, before his election and serving from 2011 to 2015, the National Assembly amended the constitution to provide that anyone who assumes the office of either the president or governor and completes the tenure of an elected president or governor due to death, resignation, impeachment, or permanent incapacity, is only eligible to be elected to that office for one additional term of four years and no more.
The amendment was assented to by the late former President Muhammadu Buhari and the law came into effect on June 1, 2019. Based on that provision therefore, even if Jonathan decides to present himself in 2027, he may not be eligible, the same way Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa of Ondo State, who became governor on December 27, 2023, following the death of his predecessor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, and having been sworn in again on February 25, 2025, following his victory in the November 2024 governorship election, cannot present himself for election again at the end of his tenure in 2029.
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Dr Umar Ardo, in an essay entitled Constitutional impediments to former President Jonathan’s candidacy, recalled that “on June 8, 2018, President Buhari signed into law several constitutional alteration bills, including Constitution Alteration Bill No. 16. This particular amendment stipulates that if a Vice President assumes the presidency (say, due to the death, removal, resignation or incapacitation of the President), that individual – having effectively completed the remainder of the predecessor’s term (like former President Jonathan) – is eligible to contest for the presidency only one more time. The same rule applies at the state level: a Deputy Governor who takes over a Governor’s term may only contest the governorship one additional time.
Section 137(3) says: “A person who was sworn in as president to complete the term for which another person was elected as president shall not be elected to that office for more than a single term.”
Another lawyer, Kabir Akingboolu was emphatic that Jonathan does not qualify to run for president again, according to the constitution.
Akingboolu cited Section 137(3) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which restricts the number of terms a person can serve as President. He argued that having completed the unexpired term of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and subsequently served a full four-year term of his own, Jonathan is constitutionally barred from seeking the presidency again.
The Sun
