President Buhari says he was scared of contesting in the 2015
presidential election after his failures in past elections. He said this
while addressing APC leaders during the breaking of the Ramadan fast at
the presidential villa yesterday July 14th
"No matter the level you are, drop your influence so that we can help
achieve the manifesto – security, economy, employment and corruption-
because if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. We
have to ensure that people we bring forward are those that will move the
society forward.
I always like to go down the memory lane to show how
lucky we are as a political group. At no stage was the decision taken
by chance, it was all deliberate. The leaders of the parties felt the
only way to wrest power from the PDP was for us to come together. I, in
particular, was scared after previous failures of the elections of
2003, 2007 and 2011. We dissolved our various parties to form APC, then
we applied to INEC, for once I was grateful to INEC. We had gone with
nine people to INEC to apply and INEC advised us that we needed at least
25 people to form a political party. We were able to go back and
raised 35 members across the country and then successfully registered
the party. INEC then informed the federal government that we have met
the requirements hence we cannot be denied registration. Many doubting
Thomases said merger had never succeeded in Nigeria but here we are. I
went into this long explanation so that you will appreciate how far we
have come and for a society as ours, if we respect the constitution,
then all the greed and problems will be a thing of the fast.”he said