Now is the time for Buhari to be the president Nigerians want– Ozekhome

A constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to take advantage of his second term in office to be the kind of President Nigerians want.

The legal luminary in a statement made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, also set the agenda for the president, saying he must justify himself as a true democrat.

The statement reads; “President Muhammadu Buhari, before the much awaited Election Petition Tribunal judgement must quickly take Nigeria out of the social, economic and political doldrums he and  his APC government have sunk it.

“He should be more nationalistic in his approach to governance; less sectional, less partial, nepotic,cronyistic and prependalistic.

“He should drop his stiff garb of suffocating  military imperiousness and jackbootism and know that he is now supposed  to be a Democrat, subject to due process of law, with the attendant democratic safeguards.

“Buhari should allow Rule of Law to flourish, learn to obey court orders and respect citizens’ cherished and inalienable fundamental human rights”.

Ozekhome also maintained that “Buhari must, as president of a whole nation, drop his 97%-5% bellyaching mantra and  endeavour to be less divisive and vindictive, and treat all Nigerians equally and as one, whether they presumably voted for him or not.

Read also:  INSECURITY: IBB expresses confidence in Buhari, begs for patience

“He must stop promoting the superiority,suzerignty and sovereignty of his ethnic group over and above the other more than 350 ethnic groups in Nigeria. He must give democracy dividends to the Nigerian people, through the provision of adequate security(section 14 of the 1999 Constitution),robust economy and infrastructural development.

“He should think outside the box of how to fight corruption, as his performance in this regard has been woeful, selective, exclusionary and favouritism-based.

“Nigeria is more corrupt today than ever before (according to the latest Transparency International Corruption Perception Index).

“Where corruption could be said to have been “democratised” by previous governments before him, corruption under Buhari has been greatly “privatised” by a few high-heeled cabalistic elements.

“Thus, corruption money, unlike before now, no longer circulate, or sip down to the common people.

“It has been hijacked privatised and held down by the jugular by these few elements at the precincts and corridors of temporary power. More importantly, Buhari should dust up the over 600 groundbreaking  recommendations of the 2014 National Conference scripted by 491 delegates from across Nigeria and implement them. Some of the most important amongst them is the vexed but overdue issue of devolution of powers and restructuring of the unworking Nigerian contraption, to become a truly fiscal and federal system of government.”

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