Buhari’s Promise Of ‘One Term’ No Longer Valid – Femi Adesina

President Muhammadu Buhari’s promise in 2011 to only spend one term in power is no longer valid, says his media, Mr Femi Adesina.

Adesina, who appeared as a guest on Channel TV’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, said President Buhari only agreed to seek re-election into office because of the pressures and pleas by Nigerians to re-contest the presidency.

The presidential aide said during the TV programme, that the 2019 presidency is “not a do or die affair” for his principal, but rather desire to serve the people.

“The other one of running one term was in 2011. When he was running in 2011 he said yes he will be a president for only one term but did he win in that year? No. The victory came in 2015. So that being quoted from 2011 is not applicable again,” Adesina said.

“There were a lot of convincing and appeals. I have sat in different meetings with different groups and the president and all of them the reason they came was that they run for a second term in office.

“And do you know that whenever the president reacted to this groups, he will pick every other thing he raised and he said the issue of a second term he will not say a word and that has been the past one year, these calls have started coming and he didn’t say a word. That reinforced my opinion that for him that it is not a do or die affair it is just a matter of serving the country.

On if Buhari’s presidential declaration at this time will affect governance, Adesina said, “I think the president had just picked the right time to make his intentions known, whether it will affect governance or not depends on the personality of who is the president.

“Don’t forget that under Obasanjo when the process was affecting governance, he read a riot act and said let’s concentrate on governance, President Buhari is just somebody like that, he will never allow politicking to affect governance.

“There certain things that he set out to do. Normally it comes up under three broad umbrellas. One is secure the country, two is fight corruption, three is revive the economy and I have said it in all three areas.

“There are successes in all three of these areas. Except anybody is willfully blind. The willfully blind will never see, even if you put the thing right in front of his eyes. We are not talking to the willfully blind or deaf,” he said.