‘Nigerians eager for you to leave in 2023,’ Afenifere mocks Buhari

The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, said on Thursday Nigerians are eagerly looking forward to 2023 when President Muhammadu Buhari would end his tenure.

The group was reacting to the recent statement credited to the president on his seven-year rule.

Buhari had during a meeting with the All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and legislators on Tuesday said it was tough ruling Nigeria.

He added that he was eager to complete his tenure and retire to Daura in Katsina.

In a statement issued by its Secretary-General, Sola Ebiseni, the Afenifere urged the president to maximise the remaining time he has in office in dealing with the issues confronting the country.

The statement read: “It was not clear the real import of President Buhari’s statement when he described his seven years in office as tough and that he was eager to go. If it were before the parties’ conventions when it was thought that there was a hidden agenda to perpetuate his tenure beyond the constitutional limit, it would have been right to suggest that the statement was an assurance to Nigerians and the international community of his commitment to honouring his departure date.

“His assertion of the toughness of the assignment is rather amusing for a man that has seen it all both as a military ruler and democratically elected leader of his people. Like he has done in the last seven years on vital national issues, the president merely lamented the six months strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities without proffering any solution or giving any assurance on how soon the youths of this country would return to school.

READ ALSO: It has been tough ruling Nigeria – Buhari

“It is his stock-in-trade to merely lament mass killings of the people by terrorists who have become most emboldened and unruly in his seven years so far.

“Notwithstanding, the laughable self-assessment of surpassing his predecessor in the provisions of infrastructures and the somewhat juvenile nostalgia of having not visited his hometown in one year, the lamentation is both an admission of incapacity and failure, the natural consequence or effect of which is to take a bow and relieve himself of further torment by a duty of mutual disaster to the labourer and more so to the farm owners.

“The call, only two months ago, for a Government of National Unity, or for the resignation of the president, would have, no doubt, found justification in this admission. Yet, the situation today is quite different from the factors that made such suggestions plausible.

“For what it is worth, the nation is frenzied by the electoral activities, which in itself, suggests that Nigerians are more eager than Muhammadu Buhari himself to see the end of his most uninspiring if not disastrous tenure. Besides, this government is virtually now a ghost of itself with the players so deflated of the air of legitimacy that even the most vibrant deputy has lost steam having been tricked into a disastrous popularity contest within the ruling party constituted only by a few Nigerians.

“In other words, there is no one better hand than the President left in this government to be invested with the destiny of Nigerians. Yet, in spite of the obvious darkness which heralds the twilight, the sun on the horizon is still hot enough to get the clothes. Rather than chicken out, Buhari could still, within the remaining months, rally his government, including the distraught National Assembly members, many of whom have been rejected even by their parties and who will certainly not eventually return, to leave last-minute legacies that will temper the harsh verdict of history.”

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