An Open Letter to Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

YOUR EXCELLENCY, PLEASE DO NOT RUN!

An Open Letter to Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

Your Excellency,

I write to you today not as an adversary, but as someone who has watched your trajectory with genuine admiration and now, with deep concern.

I write because silence in the face of impending self-destruction is complicity, and I cannot be silent while you stand at the edge of a precipice that threatens to consume everything you have built.

REMEMBER HOW YOU ROSE:

In 2015, you stood as the most powerful man in Africa’s most populous nation. You did not stand alone. You commanded the loyalty of over 30 State Governors, a commanding majority in the Senate, and a formidable caucus in the House of Representatives. The machinery of state was firmly in your hands. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), then the self-proclaimed largest political party in Africa, was your platform. You had the incumbency, the resources, and the structural advantage that politicians across the continent only dream of. And yet, the Nigerian people spoke.

They spoke through their ballots, through their frustrations with insecurity, through their exhaustion with corruption, and through their hunger for change. The “Change” mantra swept across the nation like a desert wind, and on March 28, 2015, the verdict was delivered: General Muhammadu Buhari would be the next President of Nigeria.

REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID NEXT:

What you did next, Your Excellency, is what transformed you from a defeated politician into a global icon. Before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could even formally declare the results, you picked up the phone.

You called General Buhari.

You conceded defeat.

You uttered words that will echo through the annals of African political history: “No ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian.”

In a continent where electoral disputes have ignited civil wars, where Kenya burned in 2007, where Côte d’Ivoire bled in 2010, where countless nations have been torn asunder by leaders who could not accept the humility of defeat, you chose peace over power.

You chose Nigeria over yourself. The world erupted in applause.

The African Union celebrated you.

The European Union praised you.

The United States commended you.

The United Nations held you up as a model of democratic maturity.

You were no longer just the President of Nigeria; you had become a citizen of the world.

REMEMBER WHAT THE WORLD MADE OF YOU:

In the years that followed, Your Excellency, the world did not merely remember your concession, it elevated you because of it. You were appointed to prestigious international panels and peace mediation missions.

You became a fellow at renowned institutions. You were invited to speak at global forums not because you were a “fantastic President”, let us be honest about this but because you had demonstrated a rare dignity that transcended the ordinary metrics of governance.

You became an ambassador of peace, your name spoken in the same breath as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the elder statesman who has parlayed his own post-presidency into continental influence, and yes, even Nelson Mandela, who walked away from power when he could have clung to it.

That is your legacy, Your Excellency.

That is your fortune.

That is the global prestige you earned not through legislative triumphs or economic miracles, but through a single, profound act of patriotic humility.

AND NOW, THIS?

Which brings us to the present moment, and to the rumors that refuse to die.

The whispers that have become roars. The speculation that you are preparing to contest the 2027 Presidential Elections.

Worse still, the speculation that you would do so not as a unifying figure, but as a factional PDP candidate.

A splinter within a fractured party, a man who once held the whole now grasping at broken pieces.

Your Excellency, don’t do it.

THE SILENCE IS ALREADY COSTING YOU:

Your silence on this matter is not golden. It is damaging. Every day that you refuse to categorically disavow these ambitions, your global influence erodes. The international community that once celebrated you is now watching with furrowed brows. The peace ambassadors and democratic institutions that elevated you are wondering: Was it all a performance? Was the concession merely a tactical retreat, not a principled surrender?

Your silence is being interpreted as tacit confirmation. And with each passing day, the man who once symbolized the peaceful transfer of power in Africa is being recast as just another aging politician who cannot let go.

LET’S BE CLEAR ABOUT WHY THE WORLD CELEBRATES YOU:

Let us strip away any illusion, Your Excellency. The world does not celebrate you today because you were a transformational president. History will debate your record on Boko Haram, on the Chibok girls, on corruption, on infrastructure, on the economy. Reasonable people will disagree on your scorecard. But what is not debatable is what you did on that March day in 2015. The world celebrates you because, at the moment of maximum temptation, when violence was an option, when constitutional subversion was possible, when many urged you to fight, you chose dignity over desperation. You chose to concede to a man, General Buhari, whose own history was marked by military rigidity and whom many feared would not accept defeat had the tables been turned. You conceded to a man whose supporters were violence-prone, whose rhetoric was inflammatory, and whose ascension many predicted would be resisted by the establishment.

You proved them all wrong. Not by winning, but by losing with grace.

That is your currency. That is your global capital. And you are about to spend it all on a fool’s errand.

WHOSE TEMPLATE ARE YOU EMULATING?

I ask you, Your Excellency: whose template are you adopting for this perfidious journey?

Donald Trump?

Let us examine that parallel, because it is instructive. Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and refused to concede. He spent four years in the political wilderness, but he never truly left the stage. He riled up his MAGA base while Joe Biden sat in the White House. He held rallies. He stoked grievance. He built a movement of the angry and the disaffected. And when he returned in 2024, he had an army, a structure, a base, a cult of personality that had been nurtured in opposition.

But you, Your Excellency, Who is your structure?

Where is your MAGA base equivalent? Where are the governors who once stood with you? Many have defected, retired, or moved on. Where is your Senate caucus? Where is your House machinery?

The PDP you once commanded is now a warring coalition of factions: Wike’s camp, the Turaki’s camp, the legacy structures, the new entrants.

You would not be entering as a unifier; you would be entering as a divider, a factional warlord in a party already bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.

AND THE NIGERIAN ELECTORATE?

The same electorate that rejected you in 2015, have they suddenly forgotten why? Have the years of Buhari’s failures somehow transformed your tenure into a golden age in their memory? Or will they see a man who once had his chance, who once had the full machinery of state, and who still could not deliver enough to earn their renewed mandate?

THIS IS NOT ABOUT VOTE SPLITTING:

Let me be explicit, Your Excellency: this letter is not about the theory that you are being used as a spoiler candidate to divide Peter Obi’s votes in 2027. That theory has its adherents, and it may even be true. But that is not my concern.

My concern is you.

My concern is your legacy. My concern is the imminent defeat that awaits you and the ruination of your hard-earned global prestige that will follow.

Without sounding disrespectful, you will not win, Your Excellency. You will not win because you have no structure. You will not win because you have no base. You will not win because the Nigerian electorate, for all its fickleness, does not reward political nostalgia when that nostalgia is not backed by organization, resources, and genuine grassroots energy.

And when you lose and you will lose, you will not lose with the dignity of 2015. You will lose as a fading politician who refused to read the room, who mistook global applause for domestic popularity, who confused peace ambassador status with electoral viability. You will lose as a man who gambled his legacy and lost.

THE CHOICE BEFORE YOU:

Your Excellency, you stand at a crossroads that few former leaders are privileged to face with such clarity.

Path One: You continue on this rumored course. You announce. You campaign. You divide. You lose. And in losing, you become a cautionary tale. The man who had the world in his hands and traded it for a fantasy. The man who was compared to Mandela and ended up as a footnote in factional politics. The man whose name, once synonymous with democratic grace, becomes associated with desperation and delusion.

Path Two: You speak. Clearly. Unequivocally. You state that you will not contest in 2027. You reaffirm your commitment to your global peace work. You lend your stature to mediating Nigeria’s crises rather than exacerbating them. You allow history to cement your 2015 concession as the defining act of your public life. You retire into the rarefied company of African elders whose influence outlives their time in office because they knew when to stop.

FINAL APPEAL:

Your Excellency, I am not your enemy. I am a Nigerian who remembers the relief that swept through our streets when you conceded in 2015. I remember the pride of telling foreign friends that our president had chosen peace. I remember thinking: Perhaps Nigeria has turned a corner. Perhaps we have finally produced a leader who understands that office is temporary, but nationhood is eternal.

Do not make me regret that pride. Do not make millions of Nigerians who celebrated you feel fooled. We love you for who you are right now. A global icon.

The world is watching. History is taking notes.  And the pen, as they say, is merciless.

Your Excellency, don’t do it.

Respectfully,

Hon. Lawrence Odoemelem

A Concerned Citizen of Nigeria

Odoemelem is a PR Consultant & Strategist.

He writes from Sugarland Texas.