SAN FRANCISCO, April 22, (THEWILL) – Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity has revealed President Muhammadu Buhari’s motivation for seeking a second term.
In an OP-ED sent to THEWILL, Shehu stated that a major motivation for President Buhari’s bid for second term is that the gains made from 2015 should not be frittered.
He revealed further that the major challenge for the President, who won with massive votes in 2015, is to do as well as he did, or even better during his second term.
He declared that Buhari is not involved in corruption and is not desperate for the office. “He is among the few leaders we have who are not obsessed with money, cars and homes but working passionately for the country’s economy, peace and safety. If a corrupt politician wins, we will go back to where we were in 2015.
“He came to power with a lot of expectations and Nigerians had, justifiably placed very high hopes on him.
“As we said sometimes back, he as a consequence, has became a victim of the tyranny of expectations. The weight of unrealistic expectations has evidently blinded many of the people from seeing the revolutionary changes happening across the nation.
“A joke on WhatsApp last week was about the abuse and insults heaped on Muhammadu Buhari, attacking him for everything wrong with the country but failing to answer an important question: who do you have that is better?”
Shehu also took a swipe at the major opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a new movement known as Third Force insisting that they have nothing to early.
“The problem with our opposition is that beyond fault-finding, they are unable to give or innovate a vision of their own on how they can make the nation better.
“A so-called Third Force has failed to get political traction since it birth. This is understandable, given that they have promised to give the country everything that is new but have so far produced no new faces, no new ways of doing things. Certainly, there is no face that can be called the President of Nigeria.
“For the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP parading itself on the glory of being the largest opposition, the party has not less than 10 leaders acutely ambitious to rule Nigeria.
“It will take them minimally two to three terms of presidential tenure, that is eight to twelve years to reinvent the party.
“Looking at the entire opposition landscape, it can be said that they cannot be united by ideology, the type that made the pre-2015 opposition fuse into a formidable challenger that pushed an incumbent out of office. There is in no way therefore, they can choose leaders with unanimity.
“What then they have taken to, is scaremongering by fanning ethnic and religious divisions among the minorities especially in the Middle Belt where hundreds of innocent citizens are confronted with violent death.”
Shehu declared that the government has irrefutable evidence that much as most of these killings are arising from herdsmen-farmers attacks, some of it is driven by politicians.
“The recent arrests by the army in Taraba State point to a clear political sponsorship, and the kingpins, some of whom have been arrested have been handed over to the DSS for further investigation,” he revealed.
“Others who are being sought have either gone into hiding or they are pulling strings of blackmail to force the hands of government to abandon the search for them.
“It is clear by now that the Middle Belt killings even if they are not caused by the opposition are no doubt seen as a political opportunity to set the tone for the 2019 elections.”
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