Yerima insists Buhari will be replaced in 2019

- Alhaji Shettima Usman Yerima said the Buhari administration has failed

- The Arewa president said more was expected from the current administration

- He said another person will be selected to replace Buhari in 2019

Alhaji Shettima Usman Yerima who is the president of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) has lamented that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has failed to live up to expectation.

In an interview with Vanguard, Yerima said a lot was expected of the Buhari administration but it has failed to deliver on its promises.

Yerima insists Buhari will be replaced in 019

He said ordinary people in the north supported Buhari hoping that the change he promised will make their life better but the reverse has been the case.

The AYCF president said Buhari will be replaced in 2019 and that his replacement will be a younger person who understands the trends in the world.

He said: “This government enjoyed a lot of support and goodwill from the people who were hoping that things will be better if we could put a new government in place. And that is why they came out en-masse to give the kind of support and mandate the government got in 2015 against then ruling party. And then opposition party won an election the kind that has never happened in the history of this country. 

“Eventually we had a new government in place but the hope of the people has been dashed. The hope has been destroyed. So, the state of the nation is neither here nor there. The economy is nothing to write home about. A lot of things are not just right. I think this is not what Nigerians bargained for. And so, in essence, a lot of Nigerians are not really happy.

I think we are going to bring an alternative in 2019. We have to bring a new order in the country because we cannot afford to have a president who is not in charge of the affairs. This is coupled with the fact that some of us looked at his age ahead of 2015 and came up with the reservation that it was not a good idea to have a man of his age to lead a country like Nigeria with a population of about 200 million people. People thought we were undermining him at that time but we said no because somebody of Buhari’s age would find it difficult managing his personal affairs not to talk of the affairs of a huge country like ours. We have nothing against President Buhari personally but we believe somebody of his age should be home to manage his health. 

“And age is not even the problem because, when you look at global events, the way things are turning around universally, you will agree with me that we need, in the saddle, somebody who is in tune with the global reality. We need people who are digitalization compliant to turn things around in terms of intellectual capacity, in terms of globalization and people who will be in touch with the current world order. We need somebody that is agile and knowledgeable enough to move round the world with his counterparts. For now in Nigeria, that is not the case. And I don’t think we are making any headway in that direction. 

“And the worst thing is that, for government to look for capable hands that can turn around things positively, it ended up picking individuals that had been out of circulation for a very long time. These outdated and spent forces constitute government and they are not doing well. Now, you can see the confusion everywhere. The reality is not all about Buhari as a person. The reality is about nature that is taking its toll on him coupled with the situation of his health that nobody knows. I am afraid we may fall into a constitutional crisis we were plunged into during the Yar’ Adua government. 

And that would not augur well for us as a country.

This view is across board. You know, from what we gathered, there are some aggrieved people who find it difficult coming out openly to speak the minds of their people or to express their views on the state of the nation. But some of us who are trained to speak the truth without minding whose ox is gored will always come out to speak. For now, nobody is happy with the situation. 

“It is really sad that those of us from the northern part of the country who thought the coming of Buhari would be a new dawn for us, the down trodden who feel marginalized and thought would be rescued by him, are also disappointed. The common man in the North, the pepper seller, the sugarcane hawker, the beggar and others, who trooped out to give him the mandate thought he would look round to see a policy that would help their cause, are disappointed. At the end of the day, some of his policies are only on the air! And directly, you cannot feel the impact.”

Deparadigm