Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na'Abba, says President Muhammadu Buhari lacks the physical and intellectual capacity to govern Nigeria, and has declared that he will not back Buhari for re-election in 2019.
Umar Gali Na’Abba
While speaking to a PUNCH correspondentsover the telephone in Abuja on Sunday, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Umar Gali Na’Abba, said President Muhammadu Buhari lacks the physical and intellectual capacity to govern Nigeria.
The former lawmaker who made the statement was reacting when a correspondent contacted him to confirm comments attributed to him concerning calls on the President to seek a second term, said; “He (President Buhari) hasn’t got the capacity physically and intellectually to govern Nigeria this is my honest opinion.”
In response to a question as to whether he said the ‘President feels that since he is now in charge, everything is in order,’ Na’Abba said, “I confirm what I said in the interview with Osasu on the Ossasu TV show”, adding that the President would not get his support should he seek a second term come 2019.
The former lawmaker who is a member of the Board of Trustees of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said this on the Osasu Show anchored by Osasu Igbinedion, and when asked whether he would be supporting Buhari, he said, “There is no way I can support him.”
He said when he met with Buhari to advise him, the President said he should not worry, that everything was going as planned. “I had the opportunity of sitting with the President and tell him that this is what is wrong but he told me that things were wrong before but with his election, everything is right now. That was what he told me and I was very disappointed.”
The ex-speaker said Buhari refused to carry the APC leaders along because he believed that all politicians were evil, adding that the President only recently decided to appoint party members into boards because he was seeking re-election.
“I decided to move back to the APC from the PDP to support him because from his utterances, I believed he wanted to add value to democracy and this is three years into his administration and he doesn’t work with the party, he regards party members as evil, he doesn’t work with anybody, he doesn’t consult with anybody in the party.
“I am a member of the Board of Trustees of the party even though we don’t have it officially. We had a meeting of such a board or whatever you call it in February 2016.
“That meeting was only called again in November 2017 when he decided that he wanted to get re-elected and he needs us. He promised to reconstitute boards. He had earlier refused to do that because he believed politicians were responsible for all the evil in this country and he also promised to increase the number of ministers. In a nutshell, the President has not added value to democracy by an inch.”
The ex-lawmaker said, said he was aware that about seven governors had endorsed the President’s re-election bid, and argued that the governors were acting alone, without the support of their state chapters since no one was consulted before the endorsement.