From Chidi Nnadi, Enugu

The Buhari Support Organisation (BSO), Enugu State chapter, has appealed to groups canvassing for or against giving President Muhammadu Buhari an automatic ticket by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to give him a break.

The Enugu State Publicity Secretary of BSO, Mr. Chibueze Eze who stated this in a statement issued in Enugu pointed out that such calls were distracting the president from his duty of managing in the country.

“We are making this candid appeal taking into cognizance, Section 20 of the Constitution of our great party, which provides that All party posts prescribed or implied by this Constitution shall be filled by democratically conducted elections at the respective National Convention or Congress subject, where possible, to consensus. Provided that where a candidate has emerged by consensus for an elective position, a vote of “Yes” or “No” by ballot or vote shall be called, to ensure that it was not an imposition which could breed discontent and crisis.

“It is our opinion that with this unambiguous provision of the constitution of our great party, the issue of automatic ticket for Mr. President, which is gaining traction in the public domain, is more or less a distraction. More so, when Mr. President in our analysis going by the solid foundation he is laying could easily garner consensus among our party faithful. And going by the tradition of US presidential system, Obama, Bush, Clinton and Reagan, to mention a few, were not subjected to gruesome primary.

“Accordingly, it then behooves on APC leadership, membership and Nigerians in general to join Mr. President in fixing Nigeria now. We battle against a huge infrastructure deficit, which makes the generation of employment, the alleviation of poverty, industrialization and growth of democracy in our dear country almost impossible,” he said.

Eze revealed that two groups of Nigerians who are clandestinely posing as patriots are carrying out the onslaught, saying that they know that wittingly or unwittingly their core objectives were to distract President Buhari.

“One is the group who has canonized the 2014 Jonathan Constitutional Conference as a sacred document; to them adoption of which is the only solution to the myriads of problem of abject poverty, gross unemployment, inadequate electricity supply and lack of democracy at state and local government council tiers of government in Nigeria.

“For this pseudo patriots, it doesn’t matter that in all the 36 states of the federation that what we have as parliaments are rubber-stamp Houses of Assembly and Houses of Assembly, which do not perform oversight functions nor checks and balances,” he noted.