Despite his meeting with Atiku, Jonathan's men decide to back Tinubu

The supporters, who belong to the Citizens Network For Peace and Development in Nigeria (CNPDN) group, said they decided to throw their weights behind Tinubu after Jonathan declined to heed their persistent calls to contest the presidential race.

According to them, the former Lagos State governor remains the only candidate with structures and capacity to win the next year's election.

This comes barely three days after the former president held a meeting with a delegation of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwarts led by the party's presidential flag-bearer, Abubakar Atiku.

The meeting, which took place at Jonathan's Abuja residence on Thursday, November 17, 2022, came after Jonathan had earlier endorsed the candidacy of Atiku and his running mate, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, for the 2023 presidential election.

However, it seems the former president's message may have been ignored by CNPDN, which was among the coalition of civic groups that called on Jonathan to join the presidential race on the platform of the APC earlier this year.

Speaking at a news briefing in Abuja this weekend, the group's National Secretary, Francis Okereke Wainwei, said they are backing Tinubu following the call by both the APC Northern Governors’ forum and that of the Southern Nigeria Governors’ forum that President Muhammadu Buhari's successor should come from the South.

Wainwei's word: “Our choice of Bola Tinubu is strongly premised on his wealth of political experience, intellectual sagacity, a knack for identifying and recruiting competent people and the capacity to mobilize human and material resources for the accelerated and holistic development of the country.

“We believe strongly that the next president of this country should be someone who firmly believes in the philosophy of ‘building the people to build the nation’, he should be a people-oriented president.

“Tinubu fits perfectly for the kind of president Nigeria needs in the next dispensation.”