‘We’ll ask Buhari to go for second term’
Alhaji Umar Shu’aibu is the national chairman of the state coordinators of the Buhari Support Organisation (BSO). In this interview, he spoke on the body language of some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the campaign promises of President Muhammadu Buhari.
You are among the people who convinced President Buhari to contest the 2015 election. Do you think the effort is worth it?
It’s not everybody that understands Buhari’s principles. He started contesting in 2003, after he was convinced. Everybody knows that he won the elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011, but he was rigged out. After the 2011 elections, he made a statement that, that would be his last outing, but most of us who know him well knew that we would be in trouble if Buhari left politics. This is so because we do not have anybody who is more tested and trusted than Buhari in Nigeria.
So we felt that we had to convince him to rescind his decision not to re-contest. We then led a delegation to him.
Buhari’s decision to re-contest did not come from him, but from the people, because of the belief that he means good for this country as you can see from what is happening now.
So, we do not regret doing that because of the zeal with which President Buhari is fighting corruption. Today, he has tackled the issue of insurgency. The past government was not able to do so.
Some people within the APC are already saying the political space is open to all ahead of 2019. What is your take?
We never regretted convincing him to contest the 2015 election. If he will contest the 2019 election, it is not him that will say it. It’s the same people who convinced him and trusted him to contest in the 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 elections that would convince him to continue.
You know he lives a very simple life. We don’t have any leader in this country who offers selfless service than President Buhari. So his continuation will be very good for this country to consolidate the gains in his first term.
A serving minister recently said Buhari promised that he won’t contest again in 2019, and that even if he does, she would rather support former Vice President Atiku Abubakar...
My take on that is that everybody knows the constituency the minister comes from. She was not a supporter of President Buhari; she only jumped onto the train after the merger. She has never been a supporter of General Buhari. Publicly, she has said that she is with Atiku and that she would back Atiku and not the president if Atiku would contest. So, she doesn’t have any business in this government because there is no loyalty.
If a minister’s loyalty is to somebody who is condemning the achievement of the government, which she is part of, it means she is also being condemned. She does not see that. She believes that the party is right, but there is no loyalty and commitment to this government.
We suggest that she resigns and follows the person she is loyal to, whose principle she believes in.