Presidency: Buhari won’t hand pick his successor

The Presidency yesterday said that President Muhammadu Buhari would not hand pick his successor in 2023.

Presiding Pastor of Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, had on Sunday advised President Buhari to determine who succeeds him in 2023.

Bakare, who was Buhari’s running mate on the platform of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change during the 2011 presidential election, also asked Nigerians to seek God’s intercession so that the president would not hand over to “thieves and perverts.”

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, spoke yesterday while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

Adesina, who said President Buhari would not hand pick his successor, added that he would however provide an atmosphere that would guarantee free, fair and credible election.

He said, “By May 2023, God willing, he would have finished his second term as president. He would not have stood for another  term and he will be exiting. So, he has that at the back of his mind. Pastor Bakare said he should be interested in who succeeds him, yes I’m sure the president will be interested in who succeeds him. But he will not manipulate the process to pick a successor.

“The president will not pick a successor we know him, he is not somebody like that. Will he be interested in the process? Yes, he will. He will ensure that there is a free, fair and credible election; that nobody will come to use money and resources to bamboozle his way into the leadership of the country. It will not happen. The president will ensure free, fair and credible process but to hand pick a successor? No, he will not do that.”

The presidential aide, who said the president would ensure that the country was in safe hands in 2023 by preventing a scenario that would make him hand over to looters, stated that Nigerians would determine the next President.

On whether the president would act early enough on the proposed amendment to the Electoral Act, Adesina said: “Well, it depends on how you define early enough. One thing that is clear is that the President will do whatever is needful before the next set of general elections. Early enough is relative but the president will do whatever is needful.”