An unidentified farmer in a Twitter video has threatened to “shoot” President Muhammadu Buhari.The 26-second video was uploaded on the micro-blogging site on Friday by a Twitter user @RomanusEke1 who wrote, “Mr President, this hardworking farmer has a message”.
“You must take note,” the ‘farmer’ said in his message to Mr Buhari. “Next time, if in this Nigeria you contest (election) again, I will shoot you down.”
Mr Buhari will not run for president again after completing his second term in 2023 because of the limit placed by the Nigerian Constitution.
The man in the video began his message in the Hausa language before he acceded to a background voice in the video that asked him to switch to English Language, perhaps to give the message a wider reach.
He was holding a knife and looked angry and frustrated.
The people around him in the video laughed and cheered him as he walked away after delivering his message.
Mr. President, this hardworking farmer has a message. pic.twitter.com/FbKoSmQesV
— IKEMBA 1 of Owere (@RomanusEke1) September 11, 2020
Discontent
There has been widespread discontentment against the Buhari administration because of the general hardship and insecurity in Nigeria.
A report just released by a non-governmental organisation, Nigeria Mourns, said 1,165 people have been killed, while 113 abducted in North-west Nigeria alone in the last eight months.
More than 82.9 million Nigerians are poor, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in May.
The NBS said in July that the inflation rate in Nigeria rose to 12.56 per cent in June, the highest in 26 months.
President Buhari, however, said “corrupt middlemen” should be blamed for the rising food prices in Nigeria. He has also highlighted several policies embarked on by his government to ensure economic prosperity for Nigerians.
“This year has indeed tested us in ways that globalisation has never been tested since the turn of the century. These challenges have disrupted lives and supply chains all over the world, and Nigeria has not been spared,” the president’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu said in a recent statement.
“But of all these problems, the most worrisome are the activities of “corrupt” middlemen (with many of them discovered to be foreigners) and other food traders who serve as the link between farmers and consumers found to be systematically creating an artificial scarcity so that they can sell at higher prices,” Mr Shehu said.