Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress on Saturday described the President Muhammadu Buhari, as a “true leader” and friend who demonstrated a “sense of purpose, composure, and maturity” in the weeks leading to the presidential primary elections of the party.
In a letter to the President, which he personally signed, Tinubu cited Buhari’s decision to leave the contest open to all the 23 presidential aspirants saying, “You belonged to everybody in the party and you belonged to none of the individual aspirants of the party.”
According to him, while all the contestants expected the President to “choose” his successor, he simply allowed a level playing field.
Tinubu also congratulated Buhari for the successful conclusion of the Convention and assured him of an issue-focused campaign leading to the 2023 general elections.
The letter read in part, “Dear Mr President, I bring you sincere fraternal greetings and congratulations on the successful conclusion of the special Presidential Convention of our great party, the All Progressives Congress.
“On behalf of my wife, Oluremi, and my entire family, I want to express my sincere gratitude for the very special and personal congratulatory letter you sent to me. I am deeply honored. Your words in that letter were reassuring, reenergizing, and reinvigorating.
“Your Excellency, one must admire the sense of purpose, composure, and maturity you demonstrated in the weeks and months preceding the primary elections of our great party. As aspirants and party leaders, we all pleaded with you to “choose” your successor. Naturally, this is expected especially in African democracy. Up until June 6, 2022, the day of the APC Presidential primaries, the whole of Nigeria, including myself, was waiting for you to announce your preferred candidate. All of us thought and believed this was a very simple matter.”
The former Lagos State Governor noted that it was only as the primary wore into the night and as the candidates spoke that he fully appreciated President’s Buhair’s position to be “neutral and non-aligned to any of us.”
“As the hours rolled by that evening, it became clear to me that all of us were your preferred candidates. As you captured it aptly in your letter to me, the “spirit” of 2013 and 2014 when we created and built APC was there for all to see.
