The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s reaffirmation that he will leave office in 2023, as reassuring.
Buhari had in his New Year letter to Nigerians, addressed concerns that he wants to change the constitution to seek a third term.
Buhari, 77, won a second four-year mandate in March, his last as permitted under the Nigerian constitution. With speculation already mounting over who the ruling All Progressives Congress and opposition People’s Democratic Party will select to fight the next presidential contest, Buhari had repeatedly rebuffed suggestions that he planned to compete.
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“I will be standing down in 2023 and will not be available in any future elections,” he said in a New Year’s letter to Nigerians published on Wednesday by major newspapers in the country. “But I am determined to help strengthen the electoral process both in Nigeria and across the region.”
But Oshiomhole, has blamed the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for planting the “third term” syndrome in the country.
Against the move in some quarters to encourage him to extend his term, the president in his New Year message, had reassured that he would not stay in office beyond 2023 when his present tenure ends.
Oshiomhole who led members of the National Working Committee (NWC) to pay a New Year visit to President Buhari, said the assurance was necessary because of the experience with the PDP under former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Speaking to State House correspondents after meeting accused the opposition party of sponsoring unnecessary propaganda to discredit Buhari’s administration out of idleness.
The APC national chairman expressed surprise that people were questioning the president’s reassurance in the New Year message.
He said: “I think that is what the President’s New Year message sought to do. I am surprised to see that there are people who begin to wonder why should the president reassure Nigerians that he is not going to do third term in office because third term was planted by PDP.
“It is still in the sub-consciousness of most Nigerians that the first Nigerian President tried to do a third term, emptied the treasury to bribe members of the National Assembly and since that president left, thanks to the National Assembly, no other next president has done eight years in office.
“You can recall that President (Umaru Musa) Yar’Adua, unfortunately, has since joined his ancestors, and President Jonathan did six years and so, by the special grace of God, this president (Buhari) whom we pray for, will do his eight years complete in line with the provision of the constitution.
“And because there is a level of idleness within a section of the political class, people can sponsor all kinds of publications and to give doubt whether or not the president is planning to stay longer.
“And I think it is his decision that at every interval he needs to remind Nigerians that he is not about to do what a PDP president did.
“For me, it is necessary and in any case, it costs us nothing to reassure us that I am leaving.”
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