Presidency replies Tinubu on Buhari’s ascension

The Presidency has said that no one can claim to have made President Muhammadu Buhari emerges the winner of the 2015 general election.

The Presidency said many people played parts in the 2015 general election, which made history as the first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent President “with power changing hands peacefully at the ballot box”.

It made this known via a statement issued and made available to The Star on Monday by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu.

It would be recalled that the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and presidential aspirant, Bola Tinubu, had in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, last Thursday said Buhari would not have won the 2015 presidential election if not for his (Tinubu) intervention.

Tinubu, who said this while speaking to APC delegates in Ogun State, stated that he led the political struggle that produced Buhari as President in 2015, adding that he also nominated Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as the President’s running mate.

However, Shehu, in a statement titled, ‘comment on the statement made by a leading APC flagbearer candidate’, said though the decisions that led to Buhari’s victory in 2015 were agreed upon by a few, the resolutions were delivered by thousands of people and voted for by millions of citizens.

He stated: “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 this 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,” the presidential spokesman noted.

The Star