Shehu Sani, a former senator, says the recent visits by northern politicians to former President Muhammadu Buhari are calculated moves to work against President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 general election.
In the past few weeks, several northern politicians have visited Buhari in his home town of Daura, Katsina state.
On June 22, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Aminu Tambuwal, ex-governor of Sokoto, visited Buhari.
About 24 hours later, Nasir el-Rufai, an ex-governor of Kaduna, also visited the former president.
In a statement on Monday, Sani said that though the visits have been tagged as “Sallah homage,” they have a political undertone.
“The recent visits by some prominent Northern politicians to Daura appear to be the usual Eid homage, but looking deeper and beyond the facade, it’s surreptitiously a new attempt to build a strong northern alliance using ex-President Buhari as a rallying point to challenge and evict President Tinubu’s government in 2027,” the statement reads.
“It’s a regrouping of Northern political forces for the next general election. A project that will eventually kiss the dust.
“They want to resurrect Buhari’s political charm and fanaticism and mobilise the gullible to another hollow and bewildering end.
“They want to stock up and light up the Arewa sentiment without considering the inferno it would eventually generate.”
Sani said Buhari, a northerner who served as president for eight years, did not make a significant impact on the nation.
“They had power and wasted it. What do they want to do with it again?” the former senator queried.
“A southerner is in power just for one year. It’s too early for the desperate and power-hungry northern elite to start plotting.
“The south never did that to Buhari. Their intended action has the capacity of ruining the democratic process and wrecking the fragile unity of the country when the south is awakened to this reality. Their obsession with power is condemnable.
“Opposition to Tinubu from the point of policies, promises and programs of his administration is a democratic right of any Nigerian.
“People have the right to speak and criticize the government. But attempts to whip up Northern sentiments to achieve their political ends is a dangerous political experiment and expedition at this material time.
“No serious southerner challenged Buhari for eight years. These power-drunk Northern politicians are dragging the region to a new political journey through a land mine.
“The Daura homage of the disgruntled and the obsessed will fail. Our people in the North should reject these faces and their plots.
“They have nothing to offer. From the abandoned Baro Port, Ajaokuta, Lake Chad basin refiling and Mambilla hydropower, they failed.”
