The Nigerian Presidency has said none of President Muhammadu Buhari’s contemporaries in the military advising him against seeking reelection can stop him in 2019.
Garba Shehu, media aide to President Buhari said in an interview in Abuja that even if they contest against Buhari, he would defeat them.
It will be recalled that former president Olusegun Obasanjo and military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, had in a separate letters this year asked Buhari not to run for the 2019 presidential election.
But the media aide said he would advise Buhari to run for second term” because he richly deserves a second term in office.”
He said: “My response to them (Buhari’s contemporaries in the military and former leaders) is that if they like, they can come and contest against President Buhari. He will defeat them, all of them.”
Shehu also explained that Buhari was yet to declare his intention for 2019 because he was focused on the problems facing the nation.
“The president himself, his passion is for the country. This is a president whose passion is not even for the office. Even when everyone is asking him to go for a second term, he is keeping quiet because his focus remains the nation and the problems of the country,” he said.
“With all the noise the PDP is making, even during their tenure as president did they give breakfast lunch and dinner to every citizen? Is there any country in which someone does not go hungry? I am not saying it is perfectly in order but they are just politicizing these issues.
“This is a government that has removed this country from the shame of food importation, every state of the country now is into rice production, and we are feeding not only Nigeria but to west Africa. And the government is working on having respectable prices for food items, food inflation is coming down grossly. Everyone complaining of hunger should go and work.
“And you know that this is the only government that has introduced social investment schemes, we pay out now for the poorest of the poor, the least they will get is N5,000.and a lot of these job that are been created are from loans with little or no interest from the central bank, Bank of industry, Banks of Agriculture, Development Bank and the rest. So, there is a lot going for people who really want to go out there to work especially in Agriculture.”