President Muhammadu Buhari has restated his commitment to vacate office in May 2023 at the expiration of his second term.
He has therefore warned those who may wish to complain about term elongation for him. According to him, he swore to uphold the Nigerian Constitution, which limits the president’s tenure to two terms of four years each. Buhari was sworn in in May 2015. He won a second term in 2019.
Buhari made this declaration at a meeting in Makkah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with a select group of Nigerians resident in that country, where he just completed a visit.
He was in Saudi Arabia at the head of Nigeria’s delegation to an investment conference.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu stated this on Friday in a statement titled, ‘President Buhari Says I Will Leave On 29 May 2023, Warns Tenure Extension Campaigners To Desist’.
He quoted the President as saying: “I swore by the Holy Qur’an that I will serve in accordance with the constitution and leave when my time is up. No “Tazarce’’ (tenure extension)”.
“I don’t want anybody to start talking about and campaigning for an unconstitutional extension. I will not accept that,” the President declared.
As cases of malpractice continued to hunt elections in Nigeria, Buhari also promised to effect changes to the country’s electoral process through technology. He recounted his experience in the attempts he made at winning the presidency until 2019.
“After the third so-called defeat, I said, ‘God Dey’. My opponents laughed at me but God answered my prayers by bringing in technology. At that point, nobody can steal their votes or buy them,” the president said, according to the statement.
