Tie Buhari’s return to performance, Arewa leaders tell electorate

• Back emergence of credible leadership in 2019
Nigerians should ascertain if President Muhammadu has fulfilled the campaign promises of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in deciding to re-elect him next year, according to the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF).

Its Secretary General, Elder Anthony Sani, who gave the charge in an interview yesterday in Kaduna, stated that the North would only support the emergence of a credible leadership in the country come next year. He, however, noted that ACF would remain neutral in the process leading to the choice of the nation’s leadership in 2019, adding that all northerner members of the existing political nationwide were members of the forum.

According to Sani, “if we study the democracies in the North from the first republic when northerners contested not only against political parties and candidates from the South, but also against political parties and one another in the North, then you can hardly avoid the conclusion that the North is never one when it comes to partisan politics.”

He pointed out that the forum would encourage the best candidates to emerge from he political parties for the presidential election, insisting that only a credible leadership that Nigeria deserves should crystallise.

Recalling that “Buhari contested against YarAdua who also was from Katsina State in 2007,” the scribe observed that ACF then only limited itself to enlightening voters on the qualities to look for in those offering themselves for public offices. He added that the knowledge helped the electorate in making informed choices.

The northern elder stated that “ACF was in favour of Buhari in 2015 because of his pedigree which centered on integrity, patriotic courage and perseverance needed for purposeful leadership.”He went on: “As regards the performance of this regime, the assessment has to be against the campaign promises as contained in the APC manifesto to tame terrorism and corruption for the express purposes of enabling the economy to take root and thrive by way of diversification. The fact checks should include an analysis of the movements of some economic indices from 2010 to 2015 and from thence to date in order to see whether this regime has brought about any significant change or not.’’

“We remember attacks by Boko Haram under the immediate past regime used to be ubiquitous across northern states and very frequent with heavy casualties. But the coming of the APC administration has changed all that. Today the attacks are now localised in fringes of North East and soft targets are their focus. As a result, normal life has since returned to the North save for fringes of the North East.”