Recently-resigned Political Adviser to President Bola Tinubu in the Office of the Vice President, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has thumbed down the idea of President Tinubu gunning for eight years in office.
By the 1999 Constitution (as amended), a sitting president stays in office for four years in the first term, but can run for re-election for another four years.
Indeed, Baba-Ahmed claimed that the practice of bidding to be in office for eight years was not in the national interest as such sitting president may have health- or age-related issues and could invariably lack the energy and zest to perform to the expectations of majority of Nigerians,thus stultifying the country’s development.
He spoke while featuring in an interview programme on Trust TV.
Baba-Ahmed wondered why Tinubu was allegedly moving to run for a second term in 2027 even as indications were rife that he allegedly lacks the capacity to continue.
He added: “But now you hear things like he must do his eight years; what about the South? We have taken to very crude politics and put it on the Constitution where everyone is saying the South must have its eight years because Buhari did.”
Baba-Ahmed recalled that his group, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) had, ahead the 2019 polls, publicly opposed then President Muhammadu Buhari’s bid to go for a second term and asked him to step aside,given that he was not performing well and had become “bad news for the country” at the time.
Interestingly, however, Baba-Ahmed did not disclose why the group did not go the whole hog by equally publicly dissuading voters from voting for same Buhari.
Nonetheless, the former Political Adviser insisted that the seeming fad by sitting presidents to go for an unbroken eight-year stretch was not in the country’s interest.
“Where is this thing coming from? These are some of the rubbish that is poisoning the polity. Even if you can’t perform; what if you have health or age issues, must you remain president for eight years simply because you come from one part of the country? This is the kind of thinking that keeps us declining permanently,” he said.
The northern elder added: “One of the distracting things is this nonsense that once you are president, you must serve for two terms. Who said that? When the NEF realized that Buhari was bad news for this country, he wasn’t performing and not willing to fix this country, we rallied other groups in the country.
“We met here in Abuja and told the nation that we don’t trust Buhari with another four years, and we were right. Ohanaeze, NEF, Afenifere, and I think about four or five groups met in Abuja and said Buhari should not be given a second term.”
Urging the elderly politicians to quit the scene for younger players with greater dynamism to move the nation forward, Baba-Ahmed said Nigeria needs a new lease of life and must free itself and move on from the grip of “tired and elderly politicians” who have been in power,at various levels, in the last two to three decades.
His words: “The point I’m making is that the nation needs a new lease of life. I don’t see Nigeria with a bright future under these tired and elderly politicians who have spent the last 20 to 30 years just simply managing power.”
