2015: Jonathan is running first term now — Babatope

Former Transport and Aviation Minister and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Ebenezer Babatope, has said that President Goodluck Jonathan is free to re-contest in the 2015 presidential election, if he so wishes, in line with the constitution of the country, which allows the state governor and the president a two-term tenure of eight years, declaring that “President Jonathan is just  running his first term tenure of four years.”
Speaking with Sunday Tribune, during an interview, Chief Babatope described those saying President Jonathan was no longer eligible to contest the presidency  in 2015 under the pretext that he completed the tenure of the late President Musa Yar’Adua as “jokers and jesters” who were ignorant of the law of the land.
Just as he declared that the ongoing merger of the opposition political parties would not last, he said “Nigerians should watch out. The so- called merger by the opposition will soon collapse like a pack of cards.”
According to him, “the political parties forming the merger are strange bed-fellows with different political outlooks, different political philosophy and different political backgrounds. Apparently, the thing is not going to work; I am so sorry for them, because it will not work.”
On the allegation that the South-West geopolitical zone had been marginalised by the present administration in the scheme of things, Chief Babatope said that it was not the making of President Jonathan since he supported the zone to produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives in line with PDP zoning arrangement, which the South-West lost  because of the division among the PDP members in the House. .
He, however, assured that President Jonathan as a listening leader had already recognised this anomaly and was addressing it with all seriousness in order put the all important zone in its rightful position in the scheme of things.