As the 2019 general election draws near, the Presidency has advised presidential aspirants who have recently been attacking President Muhammadu Buhari to emerge the candidates of their various party first before challenging the president.

Some presidential aspirants have been verbally attacking President Muhammadu Buhari recently in their quest to take over from the Nigerian leader.

Leading the pack are: Bukola Saraki, Senate President; Atiku Abubakar, former vice president; Aminu Tambuwal, incumbent governor of Sokoto State; Sule Lamido, Jigawa former governor; David Mark, a serving Senator, all of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Others are: Omoyele Sowore, of African Action Congress (AAC); Kingsley Moghalu of Young Progressive Party (YPP); Donald Duke of Social Democratic Party (SDP) among others.

Advising the aspirants, Festus Keyamo, the Director, Strategic Communications of President Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organisation, urged them not to continue ranting but secure their respective party’s support to become their candidates. Mr Keyamo was obviously referring to the PDP aspirants who are numerous.

“Presidential aspirants who haven’t even won d trust of their party members at primaries have made it a pastime to be abusing PMB who won d trust of majority of Nigs to become President!” he tweeted on Saturday.

“B4 any of them can spar with PMB, he has to first be a candidate. A butterfly cannot be a bird,” Keyamo added.

Various reports perused by NGPOLITICS showed the president exhibited same attitude during the 2015 general election, attacking the then government verbally and demonstratively even before he emerged the candidate of his party the All Progressive Congress (APC).

Mr Buhari emerged the presidential candidate of his party on Thursday, December 11, 2014.

For instance, on Monday 14 of July 2014, Mr Buhari, then aspirant, had described the then government of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, as hosting impunity and political rascality while selectively targeting and persecuting opposition politicians.



“What we are witnessing today, impunity and political rascality as demonstrated by the selective targeting and persecution of opposition politicians, is an attempt to subdue the will of Nigerians who have made clear their commitment to free their country from the grip of an incompetent leadership that is bent on severing the ties of nationhood and ruining whatever progress we have made as a country,” a statement on the verified Facebook page of Mr Buhari read while he was reacting to speculations that the then Edo Governor, Adams Oshiomhole and his then Rivers State counterpart, Rotimi Amaechi, were to be impeached by their state assemblies.

“These actions portray a government that has run out of ideas, resorting to arbitrariness and executive criminality in order to silence dissent. Nigeria has been through this road before. This is a replay of the selective persecution using instruments of federal might in an attempt by previous regimes to perpetuate themselves in power,” the now president said at the time.