20100816
reuters

LAGOS/ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's chances of winning vital support from the Muslim north for a 2011 election bid have suffered a setback after two rival northern candidates declared they would run against him.

Former military leader Ibrahim Babangida, known by his initials IBB, on Monday announced he would seek the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) nomination, a quarter century after first coming to power in a bloodless coup.

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who ran unsuccessfully for president as the opposition Action Congress candidate in the last polls in 2007, also declared he would seek the ruling party ticket on Sunday.

Both men are from Nigeria's Muslim north, meaning they are in a stronger position than Jonathan, a Christian from the southern Niger Delta, to win support from PDP traditionalists who believe that a "zoning agreement" must be upheld.

The unwritten pact says power should rotate between north and south every two terms to avoid political resentment in either of the country's two main regions. Under the deal, a northerner should run next year to complete what would have been the second term of late northern President Umaru Yar'Adua.

"There's a dominant view that it's the turn of the north, that the north has to serve out eight years. That's what turned Atiku to the PDP and what's making IBB come out," said Abubakar Momoh, politics professor at Lagos State University.

"Pitted against each other, they are going to split the northern vote ... but that does not mean Jonathan will have an easy sail. There are more northern candidates that will declare," he told Reuters.

Jonathan has not yet said whether he intends to stand in the polls. Sources close to him say he is concerned about the implications of ending zoning and about his own credibility as a candidate in elections he has pledged to make free and fair.