2023: How I’ll Be Different From Buhari If Elected President – Anyim

Former Senate President and 2023 presidential aspirant, Anyim Pius Anyim, has revealed some of the things that will differentiate his administration from that of President Muhammadu Buhari if he is elected president.

According to Anyim, Nigeria has continued to suffer setbacks in many areas because some leaders fail to realize the importance of advancing the projects or policies initiated by their predecessors after taking the baton of power.

The former Secretary to the Government of the Federation cited how the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s sustained dialog with the Niger Delta militants after taking over from former President Olusegun Obasanjo ended militancy in the region.

“What has set us back is a situation where when a government comes in to power, it would now take a sweep on the other government and flush out everything [whether] good or bad,” Anyim said during an Arise TV interview monitored on Monday.

“I will give two instances that will justify my approach. When President Yar’Adua took over from President Obasanjo, President Yar’Adua continued with Obasanjo’s policy on Niger Delta insurgency and President Yar’Adua drove it to a conclusion and today we have peace in the Niger Delta. Even every other attempt to recreate the challenge in the Niger Delta never worked because it was addressed properly [and] it was managed very well from government to government.

He further gave example of President Buhari’s failure to maintain the strategy put in place by the Goodluck Jonathan administration to end Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, saying the security situation may not have deteriorated if the incumbent president had not swept away the arrangement he met on ground.

“Another example I will give you is that of President Goodluck Jonathan on Boko Haram and President Buhari on Boko Haram.

“When President Buhari came on board, the first thing he did was to sweep away all the architecture that President Goodluck put in place on Boko Haram and what did we get? The matter escalated beyond control.

“Maybe if we had continued from where Goodluck stopped, the result may have been different. So, I am not going to take a sweep, rather I will look at what is on ground, what is proper and progressive, what addresses the solution and understand it properly, advance it where necessary or review it where necessary….not because it was started by this government or it was not my administration or this government has 7-point agenda and I have 3-point agenda. No! government should be a continuum and the country should be first.”

Asked further on if he’d order the release of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, if elected president, Anyim said: “On Nnamdi Kanu, I always avoid any situation whereby a national problem is treated as a regional problem.

“The insecurity in the South East or the role of Nnamdi Kanu should be treated as a national problem, just like Sunday Igboho in the South West should be treated as a national problem, such that Mohammed Yusuf of blessed memory should be treated as a national problem.

“And why I say this is that no part of the country today is spared from insecurity or some form of challenges or the other. And in containing them, it is national resources that are deployed to contain them.

“If you ask me what I will do, I will put together all the challenges we have on insecurity and device a strategy of containing them. But like I did say, one of the cardinal enablers of development is security of lives and property. So, containing the insecurity in the land should be my primary concern but I won’t treat them segment by segment.”