Buhari, You Have No Right To Search For Nigeria’s Next President By Joseph Bodunrin DAUDU, SAN
POLITICS DIGEST- Mr President, your constitutional functions which is about to come to an end due to effulxion of time does not include searching for a successor to your office for Nigerians. It is the sole prerogative of Nigerians to search for a presidential leader who will govern them for 4 years come 2023 and to the extent that you are just one solitary Nigerian you cannot usurp that remaining right and exercise it for us.
Naturally, your party members including high office holders such as legislators,, governor’s, ministers etc are morbidly scared of you and I don’t know why, because you come across to me as a self respecting man who desires to do the right thing but the people you surround yourself with dare not tell you the truth.
Mr President, I am a Nigerian and I don’t even hold or desire to hold a dual citizenship. I therefore have no other country other than this one to call my own. I will not and cannot continue to acquiesce with all the devaluating measures you and your government have inflicted on us in this past 7 years especially when it comes to the only lawful constitutional measure open to the citizenry to remove the yoke of the dangerously bad governance that your administration has inflicted on us, which is the people’s right, privilege and prerogative to lawfully change every 4 years the people who govern them including the office of the President.
The situation at hand is very dire, no one is safe again in Nigeria. I am confident you are not proud of the level of insecurity posed by banditry, by your kinsmen -herdsmen, wanton and rabid acts of kidnapping being carried out nationwide strictly for money, religious intolerance, collapse of the economy, devaluating and galloping inflation, unemployment, corruption, lack of productivity, industrial collapse, food insecurity due to inability of farmers to access farmlands because the emerging government of terrorists and bandits will not allow them to farm and produce food for the populace, political and social decline, drug addiction and growing criminality etc.
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Mr President, you and those you brought on board to assist you with the simple but arduous task of governance have woefully and miserably failed the people. I concede to you the right to argue or contend that you inherited some of these problems but even at that the evidence is that these calamities have doubled or trebled during your watch.
The summary is that you have not done well and Nigerians have the right to choose a new President that will right the existing maladies that have befallen us. However, in the past 2 days, you have been holding meetings with your party bigwigs pleading to be given the right to choose your successor just as your Governors chose theirs. With the greatest respect, you and your cohorts lack such powers. It is a sign that the APC as a political party has forgotten or has no idea of what the basic principles of democracy are or that you are all determined to take from the people that remaining power in their hands guaranteed by no less a document i.e., the Nigerian Constitution to change their leaders.
Unless we are no longer running a constitutional democracy, Mr President, you should not be discussing such matters in the open. It amounts between your cabal and Nigerians a ‘see finish’ total disrespect of their rights. This is a breach of section 1-1-(2) of the CFRN 1999 (as amended) as the measure you are suggesting is patently unconstitutional and akin to a coup d’ etat. Mr President, kindly disentangle yourself from this subterfuge.
Apart from constitutionally lacking in vires and legality, it is also morally abhorrent. The scenario here is that after 8 years your score card is low and the people have right to insist on bringing who they think is the right person to make changes. How can we trust you now so that you will bring a successor that will (a) promote or take to the next level your policy of abolition of federal character, (b) tonge in cheek approach to fighting insecurity and corruption and at times blatant hypocrisy etc.
Mr President please drop this idea of looking for a successor for your office. That is not the answer to the present inept style of governance, which a lot of Nigerians seem to appreciate. Let the process of producing fresh leaders take it’s course so that you can retire in peace. Safe journey as you return from Spain to attend your Party Convention.
JB Daudu SAN
