From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has said President Bola Tinubu will be a one-termer as Nigerians will not renew his mandate in the 2027 polls.
The ADC, in a statement by its interim National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, yesterday, said recent remarks by the Presidency that Tinubu will not extend his tenure beyond 2031 was “presumptuous and patently undemocratic.”
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While admonishing the President to begin to prepare to leave office in 2027, the party expressed confidence that Nigerians would not want Tinubu to stay in office, even for a day beyond May 28, 2027, owing to the spate of insecurity and economic challenges in the country.
“The Presidency’s desperate response to the recent remarks by former governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, that President Bola Tinubu has plans to be a life President only serves to confirm what Nigerians have long suspected: this administration is not only out of touch with reality, it has also become dangerously self-satisfied.
“That the President is already speaking of remaining in office till 2031 betrays a mindset that dismisses re-election as mere formalities, rather than a constitutional requirement to present his scorecard to the people. But re-election is not automatic, and President Tinubu has not earned a second term. “
The ADC claimed that President Tinubu, in the two years of his administration, has divided the country and sent many Nigerians into poverty.
“More innocent lives have been lost under him, and bandits have effectively taken control of a large swathes of our Northern territory. While the President taxes people and businesses to death from Abuja, bandits exert their own taxes in various states of the North.
“Under his watch, national security has degenerated into a cruel joke. Terrorists, bandits, and criminals now operate with total impunity. Citizens are kidnapped in broad daylight. Rural communities have become warzones. Insecurity has metastasized into national trauma, and the government has neither the will nor the capacity to stop it.
“The economy, meanwhile, is in a free fall. The naira has collapsed. Inflation is out of control. Food prices have tripled in many parts of the country. Jobs are vanishing. The middle class is disappearing. Businesses that once thrived are collapsing under the weight of punitive taxes and policy inconsistencies.
Nigerians are now poorer, hungrier, and angrier than they were before Tinubu took office.
“As for the power sector, it remains comatose despite yet another cycle of empty promises. Blackouts are the norm, not the exception. Billions have been spent, but megawatts have not increased. The darkness, both literal and metaphorical, persists. National grid has continued to collapse, while official greed get even bigger.
“On social development, the picture is equally bleak. Nigeria’s Human Development Index continues to slide. Education is underfunded, healthcare is collapsing, and millions of children are out of school. The youth—Nigeria’s greatest asset—are increasingly hopeless, jobless, and restless. Meanwhile, government intervention remains cosmetic.
“Human rights have been trampled on. Court orders are ignored. Journalists are harassed. Peaceful protesters are brutalized. And all of this is happening under the watch of a President who once claimed to be a democrat. Today, he presides over a system that is increasingly authoritarian in tone, arrogant in posture, and hostile to accountability.
“Transparency and fiscal discipline have become relics of a forgotten era. The administration has embraced secrecy as a governance principle. Budget padding, wasteful spending, opaque palliatives, and inexplicable loans have defined its fiscal conduct. The fuel subsidy saga alone is a national scandal yet to be properly explained.”
The opposition party further stated that owing to the alleged failure of the present administration, it is “insensitive” and “dangerous “ for anyone in the Presidency to talk of a second term for the President.
“Nevertheless, let no one be deceived into thinking that the idea of a ‘life president’ is too far-fetched. Afterall, this is the same man who, since leaving office in 2007, has single handedly anointed every governor of Lagos State, handpicked Speakers, and installed virtually every major public office holder in the state.
“What he perfected in Lagos, he now seeks to replicate on a national scale. But let it be said clearly and without ambiguity: Nigeria is not Lagos.
Nigerians are watching. And come 2027, it won’t be APC versus ADC, it will be APC versus the Nigerian people,” it posited.
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