Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s supporters who’re 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 Jonathan hasn’t met his promise to end crippling power cuts in Africa’s biggest economy.
While Jonathan, 56, hasn’t declared officially that he’s 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’s Democratic Party has won every election since the continent’s 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.
“I expect Jonathan to win; that’s absolutely the consensus among investors,” Kevin Daly, an emerging-market debt portfolio manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in London, said by phone. “You don’t see improvements when it comes to corruption, transparency and oil theft. These are the downsides to the PDP remaining in power.”
Jonathan, a Christian from the southern state of Bayelsa in the oil-rich Niger River delta, was vice-president until he became Nigeria’s leader when President Umaru Yar’Adua, a northerner, died in office in 2010. A year later he won elections with 59 percent of the vote.
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