. . . Buhari advised against second term
ABUJA. - Nigeria is once again consumed by politics.
President Muhammadu Buhari has only recently recovered from prolonged illness and the economy is barely flickering into life after a long recession - but many in the capital Abuja have turned their attention away from today’s problems and towards next year’s presidential election.
The burning question is whether President Buhari will stand for a second term. A few months ago, when Nigerians wondered whether the president would ever recover from an undisclosed illness for which he was being treated in London, that looked barely credible. Today it looks likely. Nigerian politics are, in the words of one commentator, “on fast-forward to 2019”.
President Buhari assumed office in May 2015, took six months to name a cabinet and was incapacitated for many months after that.
Talk of four more years seems premature to many. The prospect has stirred the country’s most famous elder statesman into action. Olusegun Obasanjo - who like President Buhari is a former general who ran Nigeria as a military leader and as an elected president - has sought to dissuade the 75-year-old leader from running again.
In an extraordinary open letter, which compared President Buhari’s presidency to a louse that needed crushing, he accused the head of state of being out of his depth.
Despite President Buhari’s reputation for decisive action and for not tolerating corruption, Mr Obasanjo said, he was overseeing an administration guilty of “poor economic management, nepotism (and) gross dereliction of duty”.
He was not the only former general to weigh in on the debate.
Ibrahim Babangida pleaded with President Buhari - the man he had unseated in a 1985 coup - to leave running Africa’s biggest economy and most populous state to a more competent leader. Three old generals squaring off is proof, says Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy central bank governor, that Nigeria needs a new political generation. “Politicians are a class in Nigeria,” says Moghalu, who is eyeing the presidency himself.
“They think alike, act alike and have the same intentions, none of which relate to the common man.” - Financial Times.