Second Republic lawmaker, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, on Friday confirmed that Northern elders actually adopted a resolution to reject President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election in the 2019 because of his failure to meet the basic demand of the region.
Mohammed, who has just stepped down as the running mate of the SDP Presidential candidate, Donald Duke, who was also sacked by the court on Friday, said however that the north did not choose Atiku as the candidate it would support in place of Buhari.
Mohammed, who was a member of the 2014 Constitution Conference, told Saturday Vanguard in an exclusive interview that the Convener of the Northern Elders’ Forum, Prof Ango Abdullahi, spoke the minds of the northern people when he declared that they had rejected Buhari ahead of next year’s election.
According to Mohammed, the decision by the north to reject Buhari as its candidate for the 2019 presidential election was taken by no fewer than 18 key northern stakeholders groups, adding that the former Ahmadu Bello University Vice Chancellor merely echoed the verdict reached by the northerners after many meetings based on Buhari’s abysmal performance in office.
Mohammed, who was an aide to former President Shehu Shagari, said however that Ango Abdullahi went out of the brief of the north to say that the north had chosen the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, as its choice for the 2019 presidency.
He said: “It is clear that APC and Buhari are shocked by the decision of NEF not to support him next year and they have started paying people to attack Ango Abdullahi as if he acted alone in the decision to dump Buhari ahead of the 2019 elections.
“The only missing link in what Ango Abdullahi did was to come out openly to say that the north would support Buhari. It is not so and we never discussed the idea of supporting Atiku because he is not an alternative to Buhari in any form.
“The truth of the matter is that there is no way we can come out openly to support Atiku over Buhari because Atiku has some credibility issues just as Buhari is incompetent to lead Nigeria. As it has become evident, that incompetence has held down the development of Nigeria in the last four years and there is nothing Buhari can do because he has also been captured by a cabal.
“As far as I am concerned those who want to endorse Atiku over Buhari have a lot of explanation to do to the Nigerian people especially regarding issues of selling the core assets of Nigeria to incompetent cronies of the Obasanjo era of which Atiku played a major role and today most of such commercial enterprises have been overtaken by weeds across the country.
Atiku also needs to explain to Nigerians how he is better than Buhari in terms of using a cabal to run the system and being unable to break away from nepotism in the running of the government,” Mohammed said.
It would be recalled that Ango Abdullahi, a professor of Agronomy and Convener of the Northern Elders Forum, had last week disclosed that the North had rejected Buhari ahead of the 2019 election for failing to address the pummelling poverty and underdevelopment in the north since coming to power in 2015.
Mohammed also said he quit his post as the running mate to the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, when he discovered that the party was not more than a regional sectional entity, and would not advance his quest for a national party capable of addressing the challenges of Nigeria.
Mohammed also said that although he had jettisoned his post as the running mate to the presidential candidate and North West Vice Chairman of the party, he would remain as a loyal party member and contribute his quota to the advancement of the party.
