A former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for keeping faith with his campaign promises.
Tukur’s commendation is contrary to criticisms by the PDP and its governors that the president has lost focus.
According to the ex-PDP national chairman, Buhari has hit the ground running in tackling corruption, insurgency and unemployment with the results already beginning to manifest.
“As far as I am concerned, the President is going according to his agenda. So you can judge as well as I can judge. Buhari wants to confront corruption, he wants to confront insurgency and he wants to tackle unemployment. So for me, he is going the right way, he has not deviated.
“We must remove religion from politics. We must accept ourselves as Nigerians and not see ourselves as being from A or B state, or local government. We must ensure that culture, ethnicity, religion or anything we cannot change, we don’t bring to the table”, Tukur said.
Addressing journalists on Thursday at his Abuja residence ahead of his 80th birthday coming up on Tuesday, Tukur cautioned the PDP against destructive criticism of President Buhari and his policies.
“My advice is that they should not allow religion, ethnicity and other parochial considerations creep into the nation’s politics”, he said.
On the anticipated appointment of ministers, Tukur advised the president to make his selection based on merit and no other considerations, saying “Buhari should not appoint those who want the job, he should appoint those the job wants”.
Such appointees, he said, must be credible, experienced and incorruptible with proven integrity to make a difference.
He also counseled that politics should be based on justice, equity and fairness to deepen the nation’s democracy and governance.
The former governor of old Gongola State, went down memory lane to the last general elections, saying the PDP would have recorded a better outing had he remained the chairman, adding however, that the Nigerian people got the change they desired.
Tukur, however, foreclosed the possibility of defecting to the governing All Progressives Congress at his age, saying in democracies across the world, there must be a ruling party and the opposition.
Recalling the circumstances under which he was forced out of the PDP, Tukur said some power brokers in the party found it difficult to cope with his principled leadership style.
“I preached what I believed. I wanted election and people in the PDP said they wanted selection. If the majority or the strong people in the PDP did not believe in it, then the choice or the next thing for me to do was to leave.
“Under the circumstance, it is either I leave or they leave. But I did not want them to leave, so I decided to leave. At that time, people said I was preaching internal democracy instead of imposition. So it was difficult for me to sit there and allow them to leave”, Tukur said.
