President Muhammadu Buhari is wooing southern leaders in a bid to strengthen his support base ahead of the 2019 poll.
The Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO) is in talks with prominent southern leaders and groups, including Afenifere, Ohanaeze, Ijaw National Congress and Middle Belt Forum, it said yesterday.
Buhari’s campaigners are relying on the President’s records to fetch him support.
BCO believes that Buhari’s second term will be in the best interest of the country because, said the organisation, he is poised to use the next four years to consolidate on the policies of his administration.
The Director of Communication and Strategic Planning of the BCO, Mallam Gidado Ibrahim, in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, noted that the group had been touring the southern states “in the past few weeks”.
According to him, the group’s meetings with southern leaders, including royal fathers, is to get them to re-examine the scorecard of the Buhari administration in the last three years, and realise that he has performed well, contrary to “the falsehood” being peddled by the opposition.
Ibrahim said: “First, we want to reach out to fellow leaders in the South and convince them to rally round Buhari and support him beyond boundaries.
“If the President is allowed another four years to do what is needed to consolidate on what he has started, within a very short time, the situation will change in Nigeria.”
According to Ibrahim, most of the North’s leaders are leading Buhari’s campaign for re-election because his performance, particularly in agric, and his economic diversification policy was yielding results for the economy.
The group has visited the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III. “We reviewed President Buhari’s performance in the last three years. The royal father agreed with us that he has done creditably well, Ibrahim said.
On why the meetings with the southern leaders had been going on secretly, he said: “The agenda of the meetings is not for public consumption. We have been meeting and it is not for me to announce the dates of the meetings and venue of the meetings for newspapers. It is not proper. When we circulate notice of meeting, it is for those who are involved only and not to those who are not part of the meeting”.
On the consistent criticism of President Buhari by some opposition leaders, Ibrahim warned that the “divisive” politics being practised by certain politicians won’t benefit the country.
He added: “Let me state here that some so-called opposition leaders should desist from attempts to draft Nigeria into unnecessary national opposition and negative narratives on national events by their destructive criticism of President Buhari. Some groups have also appointed themselves as opposition. This is not the right thing to do.
“President Buhari should be praised for fulfilling some of his campaign promises in sectors like security, war against corruption and the economy. He has even done much more in global politics. Nigeria is no more treated with disdain in the international community,” Ibrahim said.
