Founding Interim Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande has said that the best option for Nigeria in next year’s election is to re- elect President Muhammadu Buhari for another term in office to consolidate the gains of his reforms.
He said in an exclusive state of the nation interview with New Dawn that it was Buhari’s election which arrested the drift of the nation in 2015 adding that but for his emergence, “Nigeria would have been history after two years”.
Chief Akande said that by 2015, the failure of the Sahel states like Mali, Chad and others posed the biggest threat to Nigeria which Buhari was able to pull back from the brink.
To further compound the national problems, he said the Sahel states infiltrated Nigeria and would’ve taken over the country.
On the 2019 elections, Chief Akande said that the various reforms by President Buhari has set Nigeria on the right path to good governance and economic revovery.
Said he, “It was the emergence of Buhari and his remain in power up till now that has arrested our drift as a nation.”
He lampooned former leaders like former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida who he accused of both bringing Nigeria to her knees before the emergence of Buhari.
“It was Buhari that stemmed the economic drift as the country has failed economically by the time he came to power. Ask Obasanjo why he did. In his own, Babanguda created the Structural Adjustment Programme, which reduced our Naira to rubbles just as Obasanjo did when he was leaving power in 2007.”
On the herdsmen crisis, he attributed the deteriorating situation to its politicisation since the clashes between herdsmen and farmers predate today’s Nigeria.
“When Olu Falae was abducted during Jonathan’s regime, the perpetrators were referred to as kidnappers but when it happened further during Buhari’s time, they linked it to herdsmen.
He blamed the herdsmen issue on deliberate distortion of facts and issues adding that, “Failure of the states in the Sahel compounded our problem and our inability to diagnose it because of politics remains our greatest undoing.”
Chief Akande said the former Western Region had the biggest ranch created by the government of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo in Fashola village situated between Oyo and Iseyin with about 40 kilometers square in size and wondered why those against ranching are politicing it for political gains.
As for him, the re-election of President Buhari remains the best option for economic and social stability.
He argued that the clamour for the Presidency by the Yoruba tribe is only logical since President Buhari’s second term would have satisfied the principal of equity, adding, “But if you give Atiku, another northerner the opportunity, he would’ve spend eight years and that means power will remain in the North for eight years which is against equity and justice in a multiple ethnic country like Nigeria.”
