Women's affairs minister Aisha Alhassan said Buhari promised to only serve for a term in 2015

WOMEN'S affairs minister Senator Aisha Alhassan has revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari will not run for office in 2019 as he told party members before the 2015 elections that he would only seek one term in office.

Over the last week, Senator Alhassan has been in the headlines after she declared that come the 2018 primaries of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), she will not back President Buhari. Over the Sallah break, Senator Alhassan made it clear she would be throwing her support behind former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

Igniting the controversy further, senator Alhassan has now said that President Buhari made the promise not to stand for a second term in 2015 to members of the APC. She also reiterated her earlier position that she would resign if President Buhari seeks re-election and would support the former vice-president if he decides to run.

Senator Alhassan said: “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.  I took him for his word that he is not contesting in 2019.”

Also, she said she could not determine what President Buhari’s reaction would be to her public support for the former vice-president, who she termed her godfather. Asked what the impact of her loyalty to Atiku would have on her relationship with President Buhari, Senator 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.