Alleged One Term Agreement: Buhari Unstoppable In 2019

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria who recently returned to the country after about 103 days in the United Kingdom where he went for medical vacation on unspecified ailment is enjoying a new lease of life. The past few months he spent outside the country has allowed him to recuperate and not a few were surprised by the new vigour he has been exhibiting since he returned to Nigeria, which was a far cry from what his traducers had earlier sold to Nigerians. At a point the governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayo Fayose alleged that the man was on a life support, while the former minister of Aviation Femi Fani Kayode alleged that he had lost his memory even as online media, Sahara Reporters also claimed that he was not in the state to preside over Africa’s most populous nation and the continent’s largest economy. They therefore spearheaded the call for his resignation. The call was not supported by most Nigerians who opted to pray for the recovery of his health.

As Buhari returned stronger than many expected there are now swelling opinion that he should contest for second term in 2019. A few days ago while on Sallah vacation in his country home at Daura, in Katsina State in North West Nigeria, the Emir of Daura, Alhaji Umar Farooq, obviously excited about the president’s improved health urged the president to seek a second term in order to continue and finish the good work he has started. In Ebonyi State, South East Nigeria, last week, Buhari’s supporters took over the streets of the state capital, Abakaliki, demanding for second term for Buhari. Similarly the national chairman of the president’s party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chief John Oyegun told journalists in Benin this week that it is only the president that would determine whether he would run or not. Chief Oyegun was however quick to add that the president is more preoccupied with repositioning the country for now and not the next election.

While many Nigerians were still to come to terms with the call for the president to seek a second term by his Emir, a serving minister in President Buhari’s government sent shock waves in the political firmament when she alleged that Buhari promised to be a one term president. The minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajia Aisha Alhassan also known as Mama Taraba told Reuters that “In 2014/2015 he said he was going to run for only one time to clean up the mess that the (previous) PDP government did in Nigeria. And I took him for his word that he is not contesting in 2019.”

To drive home her position, Hajia Alhassan who did not only revealed that she preferred former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as president of Nigeria in 2019 in place of Buhari, also vowed to resign from Buhari’s government if he jettisoned his promise to spend only one term and declare interest to run for president in 2019.

Nigeria incidentally has passed through this road before. At the run-up to the 2003 presidential election, rumours started flying and captured in the media that President Olusegun Obasanjo promised in 1998 that he would spend only one term. At the time we were regaled by those peddling the story that Obasanjo was brought out from prison by the head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar to be president to assuage the Yoruba who were threatening the unity of the country following the annulment of the 1993 presidential election in which a Yoruba man, Chief MKO Abiola was poised to win. That part of the agreement was that Obasanjo would be in power for only one term after stabilizing the country that was drifting under the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. Several newspaper columnists spearheaded the call for Obasanjo to ‘do the Mandela’. They told whoever cared to listen that Obasanjo should like Mandela of South Africa step aside after spending only four years as president. Obasanjo at the time accused his vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of being behind the campaign for him to do only one term. At the height of it, a journalist asked Obasanjo whether he would ‘do the Mandela?’ Obasanjo retorted, “I can’t do the Mandela because there is no Mbeki”. In that coded response Obasanjo was saying that unlike Mandela who had a capable Vice President Mbeki to handover to, he had no confidence on his vice. Of course most Nigerians knew that no matter how capable Atiku was the old despot was not ready to leave power after only four years. His quest for Third Term exposed him as someone who actually wants to compete with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and not Mandela. Obasanjo disregarded the one term agreement, if ever there was one and sought for a second term and a third term.

Following the failure of Obasanjo’s third term bid, the 2007 election produced Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as president. Under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) zoning arrangement which Obasanjo was the first southern beneficiary, the retired General was civilian president for eight years. It was therefore taken for granted that Yar’Adua, a northerner would also be president for eight years. Yar’Adua was expected to be in power between 2007 and 2015. However, due to protracted ailment Yar’Adua on May 5, 2010 died. His vice president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan from oil producing South-South was sworn in as President in line with the constitution to complete Yar’Adua’s first term. As the 2011 general election was approaching the northern political establishment made it clear that Jonathan should not seek the presidential office saying that it is still the turn of the north to produce a president under the PDP’s zoning arrangement. The north presented a consensus aspirant, former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who challenged President Goodluck Jonathan for the ticket of the PDP. Jonathan won the primary and the 2011 presidential election. It was as 2015 general election was approaching that Nigerians were told that there was an alleged agreement that Jonathan would serve for only one term. Obasanjo wrote a lengthy open letter to President Jonathan reminding him of the agreement. The then chairman Northern Governors Forum, and governor of Niger State, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu also insisted that there was such an agreement. In a reaction the then Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, dismissed as ‘frivolous allegation” the claim that the president signed an agreement to the effect that he quits in 2015.
“The alleged agreement only exists in the figment of the imagination of somebody with presidential ambition,” Mr. Gulak said. Jonathan went ahead and ran for second term in 2015 and the rest is history.
Once again the one term agreement has come to the front burner of political discourse in Nigeria as presidential election draws near, but one thing is clear, agreement or no agreement, if President Buhari wants to contest in 2019 no one can stop him.