Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has asked President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019 claiming that Buhari has performed far below expectation and should honourably step aside.
He urged the President to join the league of the country’s former leaders who according to him “their experience, influence, wisdom, and outreach can be deployed on the sideline for the good of the country” he said Buhari should “dismount from the horse”.
Obasanjo, who was a two-term president on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), disclosed, he was disappointed by Buhari, whom he supported during the 2015 election over the incumbent and candidate of his former party, Goodluck Jonathan.
He maintained that his decision to go against Jonathan, at the time was the right one as events in the last three years were for the good of the nation. Adding that ‘’Buhari has a role to play on the sideline for the good of Nigeria, Africa, and humanity, he stated ”I will see him as a partner in playing such a role nationally and internationally, but not as a horse rider in Nigeria again.”
The former president reiterates, the area of poor performance of Buhari’s administration includes “poor insecurity, poor economic management, nepotism, gross dereliction of duty, condoning of misdeed – if not outright encouragement of it, lack of progress and hope for the future, lack of national cohesion and poor management of internal political dynamics and widening inequality – are very much with us today,” he added “With such lice of general and specific poor performance and crying poverty with us, our fingers will not be dry of ‘blood’,”.
He, however, thanked Buhari for the effort of his administration in rolling back the Boko Haram insurgency and his fight against corruption, Obasanjo said Buhari has ultimately failed in other areas where he had thought he would be efficient.
