Why Buhari Deserves Second Term In 2019

For fairness and equity I am a passionate campaigner for South East Presidency in 2023. I am in total support of rotational presidency because of Nigeria’s unique multi-ethnic and multi-religious make-up. Therefore President Muhammadu Buhari should be allowed uninterrupted eight years tenures as president of Nigeria from northern extraction.

If Buhari is to listen to few naysayers opposed to his seeking a second term, it would alter the equation for those who are campaigning for South East Presidency as a recipe to the rising agitation for Biafra from the region. This is because nobody can stop another northern candidate, say for example Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former governor of Kano State, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso, governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, or former Senate President David Mark, if any of them emerges as President of Nigeria in 2019 from seeking second term in 2023. If that were to happen the South East Presidency would have been delayed by another four years, by 2027. It means the north will be in power for 12 years instead of eight years at the expense of the South East.

Can Nigeria afford to continue to alienate the South East till 2027 when separatist agitators are on the verge of running over that part of the country? Nigeria’s history has been replete with instances where the presidency has been used to assuage a people determined to break away from the country.

In 1993 the military junta led by military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida annulled the presidential election in which a Yoruba man, Chief MKO Abiola was poised to win. Once the election was annulled all hell broke loose in the South West where Abiola hailed from. The Yoruba intelligentsia and professionals formed NADECO to confront the administration of General Sani Abacha which emerged following the stepping aside of Babangida as fallout of the annulment. Many Yoruba leaders went on self-exile, while those in the country were subjected to all manners of harassment by the military junta. Many others including the wife of MKO Abiola, Kudirat Abiola was assassinated. The Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) became the military wing of NADECO. OPC had several battles with Nigeria’s security agents. The OPC openly called for the establishment of Oduduwa Republic. Nigeria was on precipice.

Suddenly, Abacha died and General Abdulsalami Abubakar became head of state and engineered a transition to civilian rule in which the process was manipulated to produce a Yoruba President in order to stop the separatist agitations that was growing in the South West. That was how Obasanjo emerged President in 1999.

Similar incident played out in 2007 when the son of Niger Delta, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was nominated by the PDP as its vice presidential candidate, manipulated by the then outgoing president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Why did Obasanjo have to manipulate the system to produce a Niger Delta vice president who eventually emerged President of Nigeria on May 5, 2010 when President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died? Because the Niger Delta militants had become pain in the neck and an injustice that can no longer to wished away given the fact that the region lays the golden eggs but holds the short end of the stick for decades.

No sacrifice is too much to ensure South East Presidency by 2023, including allowing Buhari to have uninterrupted hold on power till then.