2019: Presidency Earnestly Asks For Buhari To Run

The Presidency has formally asked President Muhammadu Buhari to declare to run for a second term in office in the 2019 Presidential election.

In a chat with news men at the Presidential Villa, the senior special assistant to the President on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu said: “yes, I will (ask him to re-contest) because he richly deserves a second term in office.”

Reacting to calls by Buhari’s contemporaries in the military and former presidents not to run for that office, Garba Shehu said: “my response to them is that if they like they can come and contest against president Buhari. He will defeat them, all of them.”

He said that with all the noise the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is making, “even during their tenure as President, did they give breakfast lunch and dinner to every citizen? Is there any country in which someone does not go hungry?

“I am not saying it is perfectly in order but they are just politicizing these issues. This is a government that has removed this country from the shame of food importation, every state of the country now is into rice production, and we are feeding not only Nigeria but to West Africa. And the government is working on having respectable prices for food items; food inflation is coming down grossly.

“Everyone complaining of hunger should go and work. And you know that this is the only government that has introduced social investment schemes; we pay out now for the poorest of the poor, the least they will get is N5,000 and a lot of these jobs that are being created are from loans with little or no interest from the Central Bank, Bank of industry, Banks of Agriculture, Development Bank  and the rest. So there is a lot going for people who really want to go out there to work especially in Agriculture.

Responding to a question on some Nigerians In Diaspora who see the President as not changing or reshuffling his cabinet members as a sign of weakness, the Presidential spokesman said that the President is the one who wears the shoes and who knows where it pinches.

“If the President hasn’t sacked his ministers, it means that he wants to continue to work with them. Maybe those agitating for the sack of the ministers are also looking for a chance to come in to replace those who are there. In that case, they are driven by selfish motive.

“As President and Commander In Chief, he reserves the right to hire and fire. For the fact that he hasn’t done that does not mean that he does not have the power to do that. I am sure if he wants to do it, he will do it at his own pace.

“I think people should just be busy let them go and start farming instead of sitting down to speculate whether they can be made ministers or not.” [myad]