Presidency: Buhari elected President through collective efforts

In a statement yesterday in Abuja by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, the Pesidency warned that no individual should claim credit for the historic event.

The statement was apparently the Presidency’s response to last week’s comment in Ogun State by APC stalwart and leading presidential aspirant, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, about his contributions to the success of the party in 2015 general election and the victory of President Buhari at the polls.

Although the media has since reacted in many ways to the comment, Asiwaju Tinubu has explained that the misrepresentation of both his thoughts and comment might have been as a result of inadequate understanding of the deeper meaning of the Yoruba language he used in his allusion and misinterpreted by translators.

But the Presidency said: “It is perhaps not surprising that on the eve of the APC flag bearer’s 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 statement said.