Lagos | Saturday
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo will officially declare his bid for re-election on Tuesday, a Nigerian newspaper This Day reported.
Obasanjo (65) who was elected president in 1999, has recently dropped a series of broad hints that he will run for re-election next year but has not officially declared his candidacy.
However, the newspaper said on Saturday that Obasanjo had asked several prominent Nigerians to his home at Otta, in southwest Nigeria, at the weekend ”to plead with the president to seek re-election”.
He will then formally announce his willingness to run again for the office in polls due in March next year, the paper said.
Works and Housing Minister Tony Anenih, seen as the presidential fixer, is organising the re-election bid announcement, the newspaper added.
Obasanjo, who was military ruler from 1976 to 1979, was jailed from 1995 to 1998 by a military regime for calling for democracy.
The 1999 constitution allows two four-year terms for the elected president.
In meetings on Thursday, Obasanjo said he had been moved by the number of prominent people urging him – ”unsolicited” – to stand for election again, and said his decision would be a ”monumental” one for Nigeria.
”I have been touched to the point of emotion, to the point of sentimentality, when you have this type of gathering, uninstigated by me, unsolicited, as genuine as it is,” he told politician Solomon Lar at a carefully staged event prominently covered by local media.
The president, who declares himself to be a committed Christian, said he was fasting and seeking divine guidance over the Easter weekend on the decision.
”To say ‘yes’, may be monumental. To say ‘no’ may be even more monumental. It is a decision of monumental proportions,” he said.
”Whether I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, you need God to give you a monumental preparation,” Obasanjo added.- Sapa-AFP