The chairman of the Northern Senators Forum (NSF), who is the immediate-past governor of Sokoto State, Senator Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, has said that the call by a legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola SAN, for an interim government at the end of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023, was retrogressive and unthoughtful.
Babalola had told journalists in Ado-Ekiti on Monday that the interim government should be in office for six months in order to chart a new course for Nigeria.
But in a swift reaction, Senator Wamakko, who represents Sokoto North in the Senate, said the call was uncalled for, unwarranted, unsolicited, desperate and diversionary.
According to the lawmaker, to contemplate such an undemocratic arrangement a few months to elections was disservice to the people of Nigeria.
Describing the call as a clear threat to democracy, Senator Wamakko encouraged the administration of President Buhari not to be distracted from its commitment to entrenching an enduring democracy through the practice of free and fair periodic elections.
“It is indeed worrying when those who should be in the know begin to allow flimsy possibilities to deflect their ordinary sense of decent reasoning,” Wamakko said.
Urging Nigerians and the federal government to discountenance such calls, Wamakko stressed that democratic elections remain the only acceptable tool for replacement of governments.