The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has fired back at the Presidency over its recent assertion that President Bola Tinubu has no plans to extend his tenure beyond 2031,.
Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, National Publicity Secretary of the ADC said in a statement Tuesday that the president’s mandate ends in 2027.
He said the party is confident that Nigerians will not wish to extend his tenure by a single day.
The ADC said the president should be preparing to leave office in 2027, not 2031, stressing that any plan to stay in office beyond that date would be a confirmation that this government is incapable of “reading the room.”
Recall that Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, had alleged that Tinubu’s administration was tilting towards authoritarianism.
El-Rufai stressed that there were glaring signs that the president wants to sit tight.
But responding in a post via his X handle on Sunday night, the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to the President, Bayo Onanuga, described the comments as “unfounded speculations” and “political fabrications.”
Onanuga said the president has no plan to stay in office beyond 2031, if he is re-elected in 2027.
However, the ADC spokesman cited the worsening insecurity in the country, killing of innocent citizens, widespread hunger and suffering, “punitive taxes, flagrant abuse of power at a scale never seen before” as some of the reasons Nigerian shouldn’t return the president in 2027.
He said the Presidency’s “desperate response” to the recent remarks by El-Rufai, only serves to confirm what Nigerians have long suspected.
The party said the president, already speaking of remaining in office till 2031 portrays a mindset that dismisses re-election as mere formalities, rather than a constitutional requirement to present his score card to the people.
