SEPTUAGENARIAN former military head of state and candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change in the 2011 presidential elections in Nigeria, retired General Muhammadu Buhari, has stated his intention to remain in active politics in Nigeria.
“I am still in until the polity is sanitized and people enjoy the fruits of democracy at all levels of government,” the retired general who led Nigeria with an iron-fist said while hosting local party members who paid him a courtesy call in the city of Kaduna, Kaduna State, where he urged party members to unite for success in future elections.
Gen. Buhari’s recent remarks leave observers suspicious of his true intentions, given his pattern of reneging on his own words in the past. Wiping tears off his face at a public function in Abuja in 2010, he had given what many interpreted as an emotional lamentation of the state of affairs in Nigeria, where he told his audience that his involvement in the 2011 contest would be his last.
Buhari contested for president and lost in the 2011 elections, whose results his party bitterly contested in court after the retired general stated his lack of interest in personally initiating such legal action.
But when the challenge initiated by his party was thrown out of the courts earlier this year, General Buhari released an angry statement denouncing both the presidential election and verdict of the court, revealing that he was every part of the lawsuit challenging the outcome of the election.
It is noteworthy that Gen. Buhari seized power through a military coup in 1983, a constitutional breach for which he has never been tried.