President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to declare his intention to contest the 2019 presidential election in order to prevent his opponents from working against the progress of the country.
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, made this known in an interview with journalists at the weekend.
According to him, the president would keep his intention to himself until it would be too late for them to do any harm to the development of the country under the current administration.
He added that those calling on the president not to contest in 2019 knew they could not defeat him in the election, hence the call for him not to remain in office beyond 2019.
His words: “You know the peculiarity of Nigeria particularly now. If the president speaks too early, it’s a problem. There is a lot of sabotage in the country.
“You have also heard so many have said ‘don’t run,’ because they know that if the president runs, other people should just run away because they don’t have the foggiest chance in hell to beat him.
“So, they want to discourage him from running. Now, if he tells you ‘I’m going to run,’ and elections are still one year away, it gives them one year to sabotage the entire country from all fronts – politically, socially, economically – they would throw everything at him just to dissuade him from running.
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“So, when you know that, why then do you speak early? I think it makes a lot of sense for you then to keep things close to your chest till it is time for you to then say, ‘ok, I’m running’ by which time they can do less damage.”
It would be recalled that some governors, especially of the All Progressives Congress, APC, have been mounting pressure on the president to declare his intention to run for a second term.
Several meetings had been held to that effect, but the president has refused to make an open declaration.
The issue of whether he would run for a second term or not became a major controversy after former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Military President Ibrahim Babangida wrote separately to warn him against re-contesting the election for the post of the president.
They both argued that he had not been able to solve the socio-economic problems of the country.
