The Nigerian voters are now used to seeing Buhari’s name on the presidential ballot, every four years, starting with his first outing in 2003. This is in spite of the fact that the former military dictator, who is rightly or wrongly credited with high integrity, had promised that the 2011 election would be his last contest. But to the shock of many of his admirers, Buhari reversed himself by caving in, apparently to the pressures by some politicians who, although see him as unelectable as president, yet a sure ladder to climb to achieve their own selfish political interests.
While it is indeed true that many politicians have climbed the back of Buhari using his cultlike following in a certain section of the country to achieve their own selfish electoral ends, their scheming can be seen to have bedded well with Buhari’s own growing desperation to be elected president. It is not a crime for the former military dictator to seek to be president through the ballot box; though the jury is still out on whether a man who truncated a democratically elected government and did not have any thoughts whatsoever for a plan for democratic transition during his dictatorship deserves to benefit from a democratic process.
Even then, Buhari’s desperation has clearly shown in his running from pillar to post and dealing with all manner of characters, including those he would have shot on the stakes during his jackboot regime for drug dealings and other egregious malfeasance. He has had to move from one party to another since 2003 when he was imposed on the members of the now defunct ANPP as their presidential candidate. In 2011, he ran on the platform of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), and in 2015, he will run on the platform of yet another different party, the APC. Read all The joke is not on General Buhari
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