Following her BBC Hausa Service interview where she declared her support for former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, the Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs. Aisha Alhassan, has insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari had told his party members before the 2015 elections that he would only seek one term in office.
Alhassan was quoted in a Reuters interview recently as saying: “In 2014/2015 he said he was going to run for only one time to clean up the mess that the (previous) PDP government did in Nigeria. And I took him for his word that he is not contesting in 2019.”
According to her, Buhari made the promise in 2015 to members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) but gave no further details.
Alhassan, who had also declared her support for Atiku during a visit to his home during the Sallah break, reiterated her position in the Reuters interview that she would resign if Buhari seeks re-election and would support the former vice-president if he decides to run.
Her visit to Atiku and declaration supporting him went public when a video of the visit went virile, a position she reaffirmed in the BBC interview.
“If today Mr. President says he is running in 2019, I will go to him respectfully and thank him for giving me an opportunity to serve and then tell him that I have to resign because my political godfather may be running,” said Alhassan.
Meanwhile, the minister remained unyielding Thursday over her stance, when she insisted that the president was not naïve.
Alhassan, who doubled-down on her position while responding to questions from State House correspondents in Abuja, said she could not determine what Buhari’s reaction would be to her public support for the former vice-president, who she termed her “godfather”, but reasoned that the president was not naïve.
But should the decision lead to the termination of her position in the cabinet, Alhassan was swift to state without any fear of equivocation that everything that has a beginning must surely have an end.
She said she had stated all that needed to be said on the matter when she spoke on the BBC Hausa Service and hence, could no longer comment on the matter.
“No, I have no comment. What will I say now? I have said all in BBC Hausa. Get someone who speaks Hausa very well to translate it for you,” she said.
Asked what the impact of her loyalty to Atiku would have on her relationship with Buhari, Alhassan said she did not know because she had not set her eyes on the president since the interview, but believed that the president was not inexperienced.
“How will I know? I have not seen the president but I don’t think the president is not an inexperienced person,” she said.
On whether her position would not cost her, her place in the cabinet, Alhassan said it is God who gives and takes, stressing that everything that has a beginning also has an end.
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