The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) on Thursday 31 January said it has filed a motion at Federal High Court, Abuja to stop President Buhari from participating in 2019 election over the president’s “mental and physical instability.”
In a statement signed by Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, the CUPP spokesperson and another member as Co-Plaintiff Eunice Atuejide, the CUPP also raised “alarm over DSS plot to frame, arrest, charge and eliminate opposition spokesperson Ikenga to stop him from releasing fresh evidence of plot to steal N5billion from DSS election account by former DG DSS Lawal Daura, and indicting documents of false assets declaration by key Buhari government appointees.”
The statement claims “the opposition political parties have carefully studied President Muhammadu Buhari over the months, especially since his return to the country after the sickness that took him out of Nigeria for the better part of 2017, and have come to the conclusion that he is no longer mentally and physically fit to lead a nation like ours in this century.”
The CUPP cited a few gaffes and signs of physical exhaustion and stumblings exhibited by the president in his recent campaign outings.
Mr. Buhari will be 76 years old later this December.
But the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) dismissed the concerns insisting “The president is hale and hearty.”
The party Publicity Secretary Lanre Issa-Onilu, at a press conference in Abuja later same day lashed out at the CUPP as infact “members of PDP who are looking for space to team up with Atiku as he has promised so that if he gets to power, they continue where they stopped.”
He said the opposition “started by saying the president will pass on his responsibility to campaign to the leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu” but instead “The president is still going round the country. As I am speaking, he is in Kano, before a massive crowd such as never seen before…If that is a miracle to them, you should understand that when God is involved that is how it looks”.
The first three years of President Buhari’s term was marked by repeated foreign trips to seek medical treatment for undisclosed ailment in the United Kingdom.
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