‘You did NOT make me president,’ Buhari replies Tinubu

President Muhammadu Buhari says Bola Tinubu, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and presidential hopeful didn’t make him the President of Nigeria.

Tinubu had while addressing APC delegates in Ogun state last Thursday said without him, Buhari wouldn’t have won the presidential election in 2015.

“If not for me that led the battlefront, Buhari wouldn’t have won. He contested first, second and third time, but lost. He even said on television that he won’t contest again,” Tinubu had said. 

“But I went to his home in Katsina. I told him ‘you would contest and win, but you won’t joke with the matter of the Yoruba’. Since he has been elected, I have not been appointed minister. I didn’t get a contract. This time, it’s Yoruba’s turn and in Yorubaland, it’s my turn.”

The comment has generated varied reactions from Nigerians on the circumstances surrounding the 2015 presidential election.  

Reacting in a statement by his spokesperson, Garba Shehu, Buhari said many people played roles, large and small in Buhari’s historic election in 2015, adding that no one can or should claim to have made it possible.

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 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.”