The Presidency has expressed reservations about remarks made recently in Abeokuta, Ogun, by one of the All Progressives Congress’ presidential aspirants in the party’s presidential primary on June 7, Bola Tinubu.
Tinubu attributed the APC’s success in defeating the ruling party at the time, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to his sole support for Buhari.
Tinubu was quoted as saying that even after announcing his retirement from politics, he persuaded the president to run again in the presidential election in 2015.
However, the President’s spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu, dismissed Tinubu’s position in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja, saying that no single individual should claim political victory for the APC in the 2015 presidential election.
The statement said: “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.”
