By Chinelo Obogo
Former political adviser to President Bola Tinubu, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has publicly called on him to step aside after his current term and not contest the 2027 presidential election.
Speaking during a television programme yesterday, Ahmed, who is the spokesperson of the Northern Elders’ Forum, revealed he declined a meeting with the President and said he suspected that he may have developed “cold feet” after learning the adviser might tell him some ‘uncomfortable truths.’
He suggested that rather than seek re-election, Tinubu should focus on identifying a younger, more energetic successor from within his All Progressives Congress (APC), who could better address Nigeria’s challenges. He drew unflattering comparisons to former President Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, suggesting that their presidential ambitions were driven more by personal desire than national interest.
He said: “I didn’t request to meet with the president even though it was offered. I suspected that when I said to the president that if I did sit down, I might say things that he may not be very happy about, and I think he developed cold feet. Because if I had met with him, I would have said exactly what I said in my open letter to him where I stated, ‘Mr. President, please don’t run again.’ I am making a request and not issuing a directive or instruction. He is already the president, and a lot of people just want to be president for the sake of being president. We have the case of Buhari, perhaps, even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, whose multiple attempts to be president may be primarily driven by his desire to hold the office, because there are better things that he could do than be the president of a country.”
He said if President Tinubu spends the next two years of his tenure doing the things that he ought to have done but hasn’t, or improving on what he has done, that would be beneficial.
“I said to him in my letter that he should look for a younger person who is more energetic, healthier, more focused and committed to the future of the country. This person can even come from his party, the kind of people who really feels the pain about what Nigeria is today, the kind of people whose children are just growing up and who can look at them and say, ‘What would happen to my child or grandchild in the next 20 years, and why is this country consistently going downhill?
“There are a lot of educated and patriotic Nigerians, who desperately want to be part of the future of this country. Trust them with power. You have done your bit. You don’t need to run for another term. Spend the next two years fixing Nigeria. Fix the economy, fix security. It is not so much that he doesn’t have the capacity; I haven’t seen the evidence that the last two years have prepared him to continue to govern for six more years. More importantly, he doesn’t need to be president to do something for this country. He should draw the line at 2027 and prepare his party and this country to vote in a new set of people. Everywhere the APC is governing, he should use his influence and get them to bring out younger people with the energy, passion and commitment to fix what is broken, which is this country. History would reward him as the greatest leader ever,” he said.