Tens of millions of Nigerians voted for President Muhammadu Buhari and that led to his victory in the 2015 general elections, Mr Garba Shehu has said.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity made the remark on Monday in a statement in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
Shehu’s statement was in reaction to comments by a presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, during a meeting with party delegates in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
While Tinubu had said he played a critical role in the events that led to President Buhari’s victory in 2015, he has since clarified that he was taken out of context, adding that he holds the President in high esteem.
But Shehu, in his reaction, stated that President Buhari defeated the then-incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan because of the millions of votes he garnered at the poll.
According to him, it is very wrong and out of place for anyone to claim responsibility or take credit for the President’s victory in that election.
Read the full text of the statement by the presidential aide below:
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.
