BREAKING: Millions, not one person made me President – Buhari replies Tinubu

The presidency says millions of Nigerians elected President Muhammadu Buhari into office in 2015.

According to the presidency, no single individual can claim to have been responsible for Buhari becoming president.

In a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the Presidency said the past should not decide the next general election and what matters today is to elect a candidate that would “make our country better than it has ever been.”

The statement is titled ‘Comment on the statement made by a leading APC flagbearer candidate.’

Tinubu had last Thursday, June 2, while meeting with delegates of the APC in Abeokuta said Buhari would not have emerged the country’s president in 2015 without his support.

He added that the president had given hope in the presidency after suffering successive defeats in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

 “You have not heard this from me before. This is the first place I am saying this,” Tinubu who addressed the delegates in Yoruba 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 even said on television that he won’t contest again.

“But I went to his home in Katsina, I told him you would contest and win, but you won’t joke with the matters of the Yoruba.

“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.

“The second time, he picked another Igbo, (Edwin) Ume-Ezeoke, Nigerians didn’t vote for him. And he said that even if he went to bring the Pope to run as his deputy, Nigerians won’t vote for him, but he said, ‘You, Bola Tinubu, you have six governors, you have never lost an election before, come and be my deputy.”

“He knew all the calculations then favoured us, that is why he wanted me as his deputy, but I told him to let us build the party first. And when we finished building the party after we brought in people from the PDP, (Bukola) Saraki now saw that those from the PDP would not get anything if Buhari, a Muslim, became the president and I, also a Muslim, became his deputy. He won’t get the Senate president because the Senate president cannot also be a Muslim; that was how they started the campaign of calumny against me.

“And I told them that I have a candidate that is a Christian that I could nominate so that the party would not break. That was how I nominated Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. I surrendered my right to him (Osinbajo).

“I was asked to submit three names, Yemi Cardozo, Wale Edun, and Yemi Osinbajo, but I told them if I submit three names, they would play a game, they might make it four and pick the fourth one. I gave them one name and that was Osinbajo.”

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 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.”

It 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 Presidency added.

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