Nigerians have begun to react to the statement President Muhammadu Buhari made at a consultative meeting with the serving governors of the All Progressive Congress (APC), asking them to allow him to choose an APC presidential candidate that would be imposed on Nigeria as a president next year.
Among those who have openly reacted and condemned President Buhari’s determination to impose a successor on Nigeria is Senator Dino Melaye.
He noted that Nigerians would resist imposition and anti-democratic processes of electing a president in 2023, stressing that Nigerians are battle-ready to fight Buhari with their blood if he continues with his agenda of imposing a president on Nigeria.
In a recorded video currently trending, Melaye said, “Fellow countrymen and women, I am here to address you once again in the course of our nation’s history. Yesterday the president made a statement that is sacrilegious, unconstitutional, dictatorial and showed some very inhumane tendencies. The president said the APC governors should support him to choose his successor. The president deliberately used the word successor and not flagbearer or candidate of the APC. That statement has some negative impulse and negative concomitant effect is that the president wants to impose a president on Nigerians.”
“We are in a democracy. We will not allow imposition. We will not allow the president to handle this country as if we are in a monarchial or hereditary system of government. It is sacrilegious. It is abominable. It is undemocratic for the president to talk about a successor in an election that has not been conducted. If he says they should support him to get a flag bearer, it is a different matter. So, I am calling the attention of Nigerians to be on alert. We have got a battle to salvage this country from economic cankerworm and financial scavengers is a battle of no retreat, no surrender. And I want to address Mr President, we are ready more than ever before to defend this democracy with our blood. We will not allow imposition. We will not allow rigging. We will not allow any anti-democratic tendency, he added.
Also, the APC National Vice Chairman, North-West, Salihu Lukman, in an open letter to the President today cautioned President Buhari on the need to be conscious of his legacies and avoid falling into the temptation of unilaterally picking his successor.
Lukman pointed out that it would be “democratically risky and very costly” to allow the President to pick the APC Presidential candidate and impose on Nigerians, urging the president not to copy what he described as the anti-democratic credentials of former President Olusegun Obasanjo who foisted his successor, late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and went on to rig the general election to ensure his emergence as President.
In a letter titled “Succession and 2023 APC Presidential Candidate: Open Letter to President Muhammadu Buhari,” the APC stalwart said that president picking the party presidential candidate should not be a problem as both party members and leaders would always trust the president’s judgment stating, “the big worry is whether loyal party leaders and members should just reduce themselves to being ordinary observers when very sensitive issues with very high potential to diminish and damage Your Excellency’s revered status in the country is being considered.”
According to him, “The temptation for leaders to choose their successors is democratically risky and very costly. If in 2013/2014, Your Excellency could submit yourself to internal democratic processes, it is important that your successor also follows the same process.”
