Human rights lawyer Festus Keyamo (SAN) says the furore over President Muhammadu Buhari’s failure to disclose his health status is needless, as Sani Abacha, former military dictator, slumped and died despite not suffering from any medical ailment.
Speaking with The Interview, Keyamo, who is the Director of Strategic Communications for the re-election of Buhari, also said the President would be re-elected in 2019 so that he can instil a different political culture in the country before he retires.
“He (Buhari) needs time to instil that culture different from what we have learnt government is all about,” he said.
Asked if he would support full disclosure of the health status of all the candidates during the 2019 campaign, Keyamo said: “I agree that candidates should declare their health status. But if somebody is sick and is well and now discloses that he is well now, fine. He (Buhari) is ready to go; he is fit to go. Abacha was not sick at all, no history; yet he slumped and died.”
Noing that “the PDP culture must change”, he said: “Let’s be honest, most young people of our generation grew up to know only the PDP system, which is — and was — only about money.”
In an edition described by the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview, Azu Ishiekwene, as “a loaded gun, which Buhari’s opponents can only ignore at the own peril”, Keyamo said said unlike the PDP “whose oxygen is money”, Buhari did not need federal funds to clinch his re-election, saying his supporters would be happy to sell their possessions for his re-election.
He said Buhari also needed to consolidate his anti-corruption war and deal a final blow on insecurity, describing insinuations that the President was sponsoring herdsmen as “satanic and idiotic”.
When asked why he thought Buhari deserved re-election in light of the growing poverty and the weak economy, Keyamo said: “Where does the National Bureau of Statistics get its figures from? I don’t believe those statistics!”
He also spoke on the President’s reference to Nigerian youth as “lazy”, allegations that he abandoned the defendant in the Ozubulu church killings to join Buhari, and what he thought his former mentor and leading human rights lawyer, Gani Fawehimi (SAN), would have done with the Buhari government.
