The Personal Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on New Media, Bashir Ahmad, has stated the reasons the President refused to visit some states to campaign for governorship candidates of his party, All Progressives Congress, after he had won the presidential election of February 23, 2019.
The governorship election had held on March 9, about nine days after Buhari had received his Certificate of Return from the Independent National Electoral Commission confirming his re-election.
According to Ahmad, Buhari actually made the move to visit some states to campaign for candidates of his party, but he shelved the idea at the last minute, insisting that Nigerians should be allowed to vote whoever they wanted without his (Buhari’s) influence.
This did not go down well with the governors, Ahmad said, as many of them accused Mr. President of not doing enough to help his party to win the governorship elections.
Taking to his verified Twitter handle@BashirAhmaad, the presidential aide had tweeted: “In politics you can never be fair to all at the same time; APC wanted #PMB to visit some states after presidential election to campaign for some candidates of the party, all set, last minute he canceled and said people should be allowed to vote for whoever they want, but not because of him.
“After the governorship election on March 9th, some candidates of his APC and their supporters weren’t happy, they blamed him for not doing enough to help his party to win, while opposition were hailing him, saying that “he’s a President for all” and that’s how it should be.
“Few days to supplementary elections, we wanted President Buhari to record a short video asking people to come out and vote for candidates of his party, the APC, which is very right, again he declined and issued a statement saying that people should vote leaders of their choice.
“In short; for elections which President Buhari isn’t even on the ballot paper, he has received blames both from his party and opposition, all because he decided not to interfere in the process.
“In politics, when one side is hailing you, the other will be blaming you.”
PUNCH