President Muhammadu Buhari Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, has said that the president did not say anything about a southern Presidential candidate for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) during his meeting with all the presidential aspirants on Saturday.
Responding to the BBC interview on Sunday, Shehu said, “This issue has not arisen. All he has to do is negotiate and get one person out of it, and he has shown that as a leader that is ready to provide leadership,” he stated.
Buhari had invited aspirants on the party’s platform to a late-night meeting at the State House on Saturday night after returning from an overseas trip to Spain.
Starnews Nigeria reports that after the meeting, it was widely reported across a section of the media that the president had endorsed southern presidency.
However, the official transcripts of the meeting released by Femi Adesina, the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, said the president only asked all the aspirants to seek a consensus amongst themselves as against his initial stance to choose who his “successor” will be.
Recall the president had also met with the governors on Tuesday before embarking on the Spain trip. He used the occasion of that meeting to solicit the cooperation of the governors that he should be allowed to choose a successor.
Shehu has now debunked the latest report on the president’s reported endorsement of southern presidency while speaking to BBC. He said that the only shift of position of president Buhari was that He (Buhari) would back anyone chosen during consensus talks, notwithstanding the aspirant’s region, he said on BBC.
The ruling APC holds its presidential primary election on the 6-8 of June of this year with 23 presidential aspirants contesting the party’s ticket.
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