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Brookings Rates Jonathan as Favourite to Win Feb Polls

Published

10 years ago

January 21, 2015

A WASHINGTON, US-based influential think-tank, the Brookings Institution/Africa Growth Initiative has rated President Goodluck Jonathan as the favourite to win the February 14 presidential polls
In a report entitled: “The 2015 presidential elections in Nigeria: The issues and challenges,” Brookings said the article published under the Africa Growth Initiative said Jonathan’s Peoples Domocratic Party, PDP, was more likely to win the February election.
The paper, which dwells on several aspects of the Nigerian election said that “though the election is expected to be very competitive, the odds still favour President Jonathan.”
While highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the two main political parties, the PDP and the All Progressives Congress, APC, the institution said the APC will be unable to unseat the PDP in the February elections.
The paper said: “After suffering a wave of defections to the APC last year, including five of its governors, the PDP seems to have rebounded strongly. In the battleground South-West, for instance, the party won recent governorship elections in Ekiti State and got the governor of Ondo State to defect from the Labour Party to the PDP.
“The party is especially strong in the South-South (where Jonathan comes from), the South-East and among Christians in the North. Again, while the PDP remains weak in the Muslim North, it has gained new influential members who decamped from the APC including the former governors of Kano and Borno States.
And, of course, the PDP has power of incumbency.
“APC gets much of its strength from tapping into Jonathan sentiments in the Muslim North and grievances among the Yoruba who feel that the Jonathan administration has ignored them in key political appointments.