Presidency raps NEF over call for Buhari to resign, calls group ‘self-seeking individuals’

Special Adviser to President MUhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, has knocked members of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) for asking his principal to resign over his handling of insecurity challenges bedeviling the country.

Adesina alleged that the group’s position was borne out of the members’ frustration after they failed to be part of President Buhari’s regime.

Adesina revealed this in an article titled, ‘Hiding under the umbrella of insecurity’, and shared on his official Facebook page on Thursday.

The NEF had, on Tuesday, demanded the resignation of President Buhari over what it called failure to provide security in the country.

The group made the demand in a statement by its spokesperson, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed.

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It said it was disappointing that after nearly seven years of being in office, Buhari still has no answers to security challenges across the country.

NEF’s statement had read in part, “The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari does not appear to have answers to the challenges of security to which we are exposed.

“We cannot continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists, and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security.

“Our constitution has provisions for leaders to voluntarily step down if they are challenged by personal reasons or they prove incapable of leading.”

But reacting to the NEF’s position in his article, the presidential aide in his article alleged that NEF was peopled with ‘self-seeking individuals’ who had hoped will get the better of the regime after President Buhari’s electoral victory in 2015.

Adesina wrote, “The point of interest today is the hackneyed calls on President Buhari to resign over the country’s security challenges, the latest coming from a so-called Northern Elders Forum (NEF), a group I’d once described as ‘Generals without troops.’

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“The Forum is largely made of angry, bitter, self-seeking individuals, who had thought they would be leading President Buhari by the nose when he emerged in 2015. In fact, key personalities in the group made strenuous efforts to be part of the administration. When they didn’t succeed, they became adversaries.

“It is on record that NEF had always opposed the Buhari administration since its gambit failed, and before the 2019 presidential election, it openly endorsed Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party as next President.

“And that completely vitiates whatever position the Forum adopts today. It is partisan, bilious, by no means neutral. It is from a self-serving standpoint.”

Furthermore, the presidential aide argued that there were issues of insecurity globally and that the President was sparing no effort in securing Nigeria and Nigerians.