Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, on Monday declared that he was not giving a thought to the idea of contesting the country’s next presidential election in 2019.
Osinbajo acted as president for the period President Muhammadu Buhari was away on medical vacation in London for over 100 days.
The suggestion of Osinbajo’s possible resolve to contest the election came against the backdrop that President Buhari might not contest the next election.
Buhari, 74, took over as president in 2015 and has been in and out of office following ill-health.
Osinbajo, a 60-year-old is a Law professor, and succeeded in calming tensions in the oil-producing Delta region and improving the business climate, including foreign currency reforms while the president was away.
Some business leaders say he could provide stability by running for president in February 2019.
When asked at the Financial Times Africa Summit in London if he had considered running, Osinbajo said he hadn’t thought about it.
“None of that is on the cards,” he said.
Osinbajo also said that militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta region no longer posed a significant threat to oil production.
He said Nigeria had lost as much as one million barrels per day (bpd) of oil production last year amid militant attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, which was concentrated in the southern Delta region.
According to him, it was now pumping roughly 1.85 million bpd and climbing towards 2 million bpd.
That is closer to its top production of around 2.2 million bpd.
He added that Nigeria needed to diversify its oil-dependent economy and take advantage of the resource while it was still in high demand.
“We don’t have all the time in the world with oil.
“We have to use oil while it makes sense to do so,” Vice President Osinbajo concluded.
