As speculation continues to swirl over whether President Muhammadu Buhari will seek another term in office in 2019 or not, the nation’s Commander-in-Chief may just have given us the clearest hint yet.

Buhari is currently attending the 5th European Union-African Union (EU-AU) summit in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

Traveling with Buhari

Traveling with the president are APC national leader Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Governors of Akwa Ibom and Bauchi States among others.

Premium Times reports that Buhari was uncharacteristically late for an interactive session with the Nigerian community in Abidjan on Tuesday. But that isn't the story.

Electoral value

While apologising for his late-coming, Buhari said he had to wait for both Governors (Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom and Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi) to accompany him to the event, thanks to their electoral value.

“First, I want to apologise for keeping you sitting for too long, this is because I insisted on the Governors attending this meeting.

“This is why I came along with them so that when we are going to meet you, when you are going to meet the rest of Nigerians, if you tell them that their Governors were in the company of the president, I think that will be another vote for me in the future. I’m very pleased that they were able to turn up,” Buhari said.

Read that again. Slowly this time: “Another vote for me in the future”.

One last hurrah

We all know at this point that Buhari has just one more election campaign season left in him. And that’s the campaign for re-election commencing in 2018 and culminating in 2019.

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The man is not going to run for LG Chairman, Senator or Governor in the future. The only time he'll be asking anyone for votes will be for another term in office as president.

Buhari has been tight-lipped about his second term ambition, even though opposition politicians and everyone else interested in his job, have been setting out their stalls rather nicely.

If the man makes pointed, public reference to “another vote in the future”, that means he’s considering hurling his hat into the ring one last time, yeah?

No?

But surely, if the president goes on to formally declare he'll be running again, we've got to remember this Abidjan hint as the moment he let the proverbial cat out of the bag.