Following Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s outbursts in Abeokuta, Ogun capital, last week denigrating President Muhammadu Buhari over past electoral failures, the Presidency said on Monday in Abuja, that no one could or should claim to have single-handedly engineered the emergence as President in the 2015 poll.
The Presidency said the past should not decide the outcome of the next general election and that what mattered today is to elect a candidate that will “make our country better than it has ever been.”
This is contained a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, entitled, “Comment on the statement made by a leading APC flagbearer candidate.”
Persecondnews reported that Tinubu had on June 2 while addressing party delegates said: “If not for me that led the war front, Buhari won’t have emerged. He contested first, second and third times, but lost. He wept and even said on television that he won’t contest again.
“But I went to his home in Kaduna that this is not a matter of crying, I told him you would run. This is not a matter of tears. I will stand with you and you will win but you won’t joke with the matters of the Yorubas.
“Since he has emerged I have not been appointed Minister. I didn’t get nor request a contract. This time, it’s Yoruba’s turn and in Yorubaland, it’s my turn.”
But in its reaction, the Presidency said: “It is perhaps not surprising that on the eve of the All Progressives Congress 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 might 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.”
The Presidency added that as crucial as the 2015 victory 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 statement said.
Author
Leave a comment