Boss Mustapha, former secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), says the merger that birthed the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013 was strategically designed to produce a Muhammadu Buhari presidency.
Mustapha spoke at the public presentation of According to the President: Lessons From a Presidential Spokesman’s Experience — a book authored by Garba Shehu, the former presidential spokesperson. Reproduced below is what he said, as listened to by TheCable.
“In early 2013, as the leader of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), President Buhari formally requested and supported the creation of the CPC Merger Committee — part of a broader coalition-building process that brought together the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the party under which I served as deputy national chairman.
“At the time, we also had our own transition or merger committee, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and elements of the ruling party through the breakaway New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) group.
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”The endorsement and participation, alongside other party leaders such as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, who was chairman of the board of trustees of the ANPP — lent credence, credibility, and direction to the merger helping to unify disparate party factions to unite under the banner of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
”That coalition-building paved the way for the first democratic defeat of an incumbent ruling party in Nigeria’s history. President Buhari’s integrity, national stature, and disciplined messaging were central to that breakthrough.
”Not only that, for us in the ACN — I do not intend to stir any controversy — I will boldly state that the 2013 merger was midwifed to create a Buhari presidency because we looked at the statistics of the votes that were coming to the table; in the 2003 election against Obasanjo, Buhari raked in 2.7 million votes. In the 2007 election against Shehu Yar’Adua, he polled 12.7 million votes. But after the PDP fully unleashed its machinery, it came to 6.6 million votes against Yar’Adua. In 2011, it went back to 12.2 million votes.
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”And when we were conceptualising the merger, we said: What will give us a head start? And obviously, it was in the back of our consciousness that a merger with the CPC — though the CPC at the time had only one state, ACN had six states, the ANPP had three states. And when you sum up the total votes that gave us the presidency in 2015, it amounted to 15.4 million votes.
“So basically, what we brought to the table, the other parties in the merger in addition to Buhari’s 12.2 million was a total of 3.2 million votes. I do not intend to stir any controversy, but I am saying this was the most realistic and pragmatic path to victory.
“I was deputy national chairman of the ACN at the time. I anchored the transition process. Many of my colleagues in the ACN are here today. Fayemi is here. What we did, and the decisions we took was to produce a Buhari presidency. Buhari formally requested it, his endorsement assisted it.”
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