Nigeria election fears

Nigeria’s former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, said he has fears for the country’s election in 2019 as he attacked President Muhammadu Buhari for intransigence and wanting to cling on to power.

“The characters that are involved this time, as far as the leadership of this country is concerned, are different from 2015,” he said on Monday.

Abubakar, 71, was vicepresident under president Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999, when civilian rule was restored in Nigeria, and 2007.

Since then, he has been a presidential candidate three times for three different parties but failed to make it through the primaries.

He left the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) before the last elections in 2015 that saw Buhari become the first opposition candidate to unseat an incumbent president.

Atiku, as he is referred to across Nigeria, praised Buhari at the time but has since dumped the APC and rejoined the PDP, accusing it of failing to deliver on promises.

He said in December the APC had become as factionalised as its rivals amid a “draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within the party and the government”.

Abubakar on Monday described previous president Goodluck Jonathan, who was lauded for conceding defeat to Buhari, as much more levelheaded and a “peaceful, very patriotic Nigerian”.

“We are dealing now with a retired general [Buhari], very uncompromising, also powerdrunk, who will not be ready to leave power without a fight – or at least those are some of my fears for the elections.”

Buhari, 75, headed a military government in the 1980s but ran a campaign four years ago as a “converted democrat”.

He has been accused of ignoring the rule of law and using security services to silence perceived political opponents, as well as targeting opposition figures as part of his high-profile anti-corruption drive.

Questions have been raised about whether he is well enough to run for a second term, after he spent months undergoing medical treatment in London in 2017.

Last week, Buhari assured visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May that he was “all out for free, fair and credible elections”. –