The presidency says millions of Nigerians and not just one person made the election of President Muhammadu Buhari a reality in 2015.
The Presidency, therefore, said no single individual can claim to have influenced Buhari’s emergence as President.
The Presidency’s statement is coming on the heels of the recent remarks by the National Leader and presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Tinubu had in his address to delegates in Abeokuta, Ogun state capital, last Thursday, said Buhari wouldn’t have become president without him.
He explained that Buhari had lost all hopes of becoming Nigeria’s President until he intervened.
But the Presidency, in a statement on Monday by its spokesman, Garba Shehu, said many people played “parts large and small” in Buhari’s election in 2015.
According to the statement, “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 statement added that the aspirant with the aforementioned qualities “is the one to lead our party and our country forward.”
