President Muhammadu Buhari threw a jibe at former President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday. He said he was only seeking a second term and not a third term.
The former president is believed to have sought the elongation of his tenure in the twilight of his administration in 2017.
What became the “Third Term Agenda” collapsed when the National Assembly threw out the Constitutional Amendment into which it was inserted.
Speaking at the MKO Abiola Democracy Park in Akure, the Ondo State capital, venue of the APC campaign rally for his re-election, President Buhari, who did not mention Obasanjo’s or anybody’s name, said:
“We have just finished one term and are seeking a second one, and after that, the constitution doesn’t permit anymore,” Tolu Ogunlesi, a Special Assistant to the President on Digital Communications, quoted him as saying.
He went on: “There are some who tried looking for more but they did not succeed. We should learn from their mistakes.”
”We have just finished one term and are seeking a second one, and after that the constitution doesn’t permit anymore. There are some who tried looking for more but they did not succeed. We should learn from their mistakes,” the special assistant tweeted on tolu ogunlesi (@toluogunlesi) February 5, 2019.
Between 2006 and 2007, the former president was reported to have attempted ruling for a third term, after the expiration of his two-term tenure, permitted by the constitution.
A bill was sponsored at the National Assembly to extend term limits by another four years, but the lawmakers, who were said to have been “bribed”, did not ratify the bill.
Obasanjo, who supported Buhari in 2015, is backing Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to unseat the incumbent president.
APC stalwart Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who also addressed a crowd of supporters, berated the opposition party for raising rigging allegations.
He said the PDP was only afraid of APC shadow because it introduced rigging into the electoral process.
According to Tinubu, the PDP has admitted failure even before the election by its allegation that APC and Buhari planned to rig the February 16 general elections.
He said: “The PDP claimed that the APC was planning to rig election. How can you rig an election that has not been conducted? This is a clear fact that the PDP was preparing for failure. The PDP has admitted its loss of the election even before the election is conducted.”