Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s supporters who\u2019re reviving up their campaign for his re-election in February would appear to have a tough sell.<\/p>\n
Islamist militants loyal to the Boko Haram group have killed thousands, kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls and left much of the northeast a no-go zone. A third of the population lives in poverty, and Jonathan hasn\u2019t met his promise to end crippling power cuts in Africa\u2019s biggest economy.<\/p>\n
While Jonathan, 56, hasn\u2019t declared officially that he\u2019s running, he collected the paperwork required to register his candidacy last month. Should he decide to do so, he can count on the power of incumbency. The candidate of his People\u2019s Democratic Party has won every election since the continent\u2019s largest oil producer returned to civilian rule in 1999. The main opposition party faces a bruising battle between at least three candidates, including former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, a three-time presidential-election loser.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Jonathan to win; that\u2019s absolutely the consensus among investors,\u201d Kevin Daly, an emerging-market debt portfolio manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in London, said by phone. \u201cYou don\u2019t see improvements when it comes to corruption, transparency and oil theft. These are the downsides to the PDP remaining in power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jonathan, a Christian from the southern state of Bayelsa in the oil-rich Niger River delta, was vice-president until he became Nigeria\u2019s leader when President Umaru Yar\u2019Adua, a northerner, died in office in 2010. A year later he won elections with 59 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n
More on Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s supporters who\u2019re reviving up their campaign for his re-election in February would appear to have a tough sell. Islamist militants loyal to the Boko Haram group have killed thousands, kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls and left much of the northeast a no-go zone. A third of the population lives in poverty, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000054904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-17282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000054904,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17282.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17282.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17282.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17282.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17282.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton17282.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000054904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17282"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=17282"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=17282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}