Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, who has served as acting president while his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari, was away on medical vacation early this year, on Monday, said that he never gave any thought to contesting the country’s next presidential election in 2019.
Nigeria has faced heightened uncertainty over whether President Muhammadu Buhari plans to contest the next election. Buhari, 74, took power in 2015 but has been absent for sometimes early in the year due to illness.
From facts by medical experts and statements by the President himself, the sickness, which took him away for that period, was quite unusual as Buhari himself said, “I have never been this sick”, meaning that the globally acknowledged number Africa’s anti-corruption fighter has no health issue.
Asked at the FT Africa Summit in London if he had considered running, Osinbajo said he hadn’t thought about it, adding: “None of that is on the cards.”
Osinbajo also said that militants in the oil-producing Niger Delta Region no longer posed a significant threat to oil production.
He said Nigeria had lost as much as one million barrels per day (bpd) of oil last year amidst militant attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, which were concentrated in the region. It was now pumping roughly 1.85 million bpd and climbing towards two million bpd. That is closer to its top production of around 2.2 million bpd. (Reuters)
