Buhari To Tinubu: No One Can Claim Credit For My Victories In 2015, 2019

President Muhammadu Buhari has finally responded to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) national leader, over his (Tinubu’s) claim about being responsible for making him Nigeria’s president.

Tinubu had made the claim during his consultative meeting with APC delegates in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Friday.

The former Lagos State governor who is aspiring to succeed Buhari in 2023, had afterwards claimed that he holds the president in high esteem and couldn’t have disparaged him.

Tinubu had accused the media and opposition of twisting his statement to suggested that he insulted the president.

But reacting through senior media assistant, Garba Shehu, on Monday, President Buhari said his 2015 and 2019 election and re-election victories cannot be credited to the influence of any single person.

The statement reads: “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.”