I Encouraged Buhari To Run For President – Adesina

Femi Adesina, the newly appointed Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity in his interview states that he encouraged Buhari to run for president.

Speaking about his appointment, Adesina notes that it is a call to service and one should be thankful when called to serve one’s country.

Answering the question about his actions in case of disagreement with the policy, Adesina says that if he doesn’t agree with the policy, he will first ask for an explanation and when he is given the explanation, he will make his input.

“So, when such challenges come, you have to weigh it and say, is it in the larger interest of the people, is it in the interest of the country? Will it eventually result in a better standard of living for the people? That is the way to look at it. It doesn’t have to be something I must agree with all the time. I should be able to appraise the decisions that have been made and seek to understand them and then make my contribution as necessary,” he said.

Adesina confirms that he knows President Muhammadu Buhari very closely. The Special Adviser discloses that the President is somebody that he has admired for a long time since he was a military ruler.

He said: “When he was a military ruler, I was already in my third year in the university. So, I can say I knew him and his style and I liked it. I felt sorry when his government was overthrown. So, when he came back into partisan politics in 2003, it was something that was very exciting for me and since then, I have been supporting him. I am a journalist and I write a weekly column. I have been pointing Nigerians in his direction since 2003. And whenever I wrote anything in his (Buhari’s) support, he would call me on the phone and we would discuss and he would thank me. I remember in 2009 or thereabout when Prof. Tam David-West wrote a book on Buhari and it was to be presented at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. I was the master of ceremony of the occasion so we got to speak and know each other better. That was the first time I would meet him (Buhari) in person. Thereafter, he ran for President in 2011 and I still wrote in my column that I thought he was the best person to rule Nigeria and bring a change. Whenever I wrote those things, he would call me and he would thank me and we would talk.”

Finally, Femi Adesina stated: “You know, in 2011, he said he would not contest the Presidency again but in the run up to the 2015 election, I felt he should still run and I wrote that the fact that he said in 2011 that he would not run again could not be carved in concrete and he could change his mind if he wanted and the rest, they say, is history. He changed his mind, he ran and he won.”

The Special Adviser says that Buhari appreciated his support throughout the campaigns and now that victory had come his way, he just wanted to say thank you.

The post I Encouraged Buhari To Run For President – Adesina appeared first on NAIJ.COM News – Nigeria news | Today's Breaking news & headlines..

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