In the aftermath of comments made by Bola Tinubu, a frontline presidential candidate under the All Progressives Congress, the Presidency has issued a statement to clarify issues therein.
Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity), made this clarification via a statement in Abuja on Monday, June 6.
Bola Tinubu had revealed, on Thursday, June 2, that President Muhammadu Buhari would not have won the 2015 election without his support.
Tinubu made this disclosure while addressing party delegates at the Presidential Lodge in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
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He said;
If not for me that stood behind Buhari, he wouldn’t have become the President. He tried the first time, he failed. The second time, he failed. The third, he failed.
He even wept on national television and vowed never to contest again but I went to meet him in Kaduna and told him he will run again, I will stand by you and you will win, but you must not joke with Yorubas and he agreed.
However, the Presidency, in its statement titled, “Comment On The Statement Made By A Leading APC Flagbearer Candidate,” noted that while some stakeholders — in allusion to Tinubu — were crucial to Buhari’s emergence as the President, he was eventually voted for by millions of Nigerians.
Shehu said;
It is perhaps not surprising that on the eve of the All Progressives Congress (APC) flagbearer primary there are those running as candidates who wish to associate themselves with the President’s rise to elected office seven years ago.
There are many people who played parts large and small in his historic election in 2015, making history as the first opposition candidate to defeat a sitting president with power changing hands peacefully at the ballot box.
There are those who advised the President to run again; those who decided to build a political party – the APC – that could finally be the political vehicle capable of delivering victory where all other opposition parties and alliances before it had failed.
Those decisions may have been agreed upon by a few. But they were delivered by thousands and voted for by tens of millions. No one can or should claim to have made the possible.
Yet as important as that moment was, it is not what should decide the next general election.
What matters is the future: the policy platforms, the ideas, the drive, and the determination to take over the President’s stewardship of our country and build upon his legacy to make our country better than it has ever been.
The person most demonstrable in those qualities is the one to lead our party and our country forward.
