"All the machinations of the opposition elements to put a wedge between President Buhari and Tinubu will fail."
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) says the party's leadership and President Muhammadu Buhari are strongly united behind Bola Tinubu toward a victory in the 2023 general election.
The Director, Media and Publicity APC PCC, Bayo Onanuga, said this in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.
Mr Onanuga said that all attempts by opposition elements to put a wedge between Messrs Buhari and Tinubu would fail.
He said the reference to the naira exchange rate by Mr Tinubu at a campaign rally in Calabar, Cross River, was not an attack on the Buhari-led administration as was being speculated.
"We find it important to correct the misrepresentation of the statement of our candidate, Asiwaju Tinubu at the campaign rally in Calabar by a section of the media," he said.
Mr Onanuga said Mr Tinubu at the rally, urged the party's supporters and people of Cross River not to vote for Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, because of their litany of failures while in power for 16 years.
"The reference to exchange rate was not in any way an attack on the Buhari-led APC administration, but an attempt to capture how the economic mismanagement of the PDP created forex crisis in the country since 2015," he said.
He added that individuals who followed the entire sequence and context of what Mr Tinubu said at the Calabar rally would know he directed his statement against PDP and Atiku.
"Let's we forget, the PDP left the forex reserve at $28 billion by May 2015, when Buhari took over despite unprecedented revenue from crude oil.
"Even with the massive oil theft and low price of crude, until recently, President Buhari had built up the reserve to about 38 billion dollars.
"The PDP in 1999 met the exchange rate at N85 to one dollar in 1999 and left it at N230 in 2015.
"The futile attempt to misrepresent Tinubu by the mischievous PDP media did not detract his central message," Mr Onanuga said.
He added that the former two-term Lagos State governor explicitly said the people should not follow PDP and Atiku because they don't know the road.
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Mr Onanuga said that Mr Tinubu could not have meant Mr Buhari does not know the road, having celebrated numerous times, the achievements of his administration.
The APC Director of media and publicity said Mr Tinubu had also said at the campaign fora that he would build on Buhari's achievements if elected on 25 February.
He said it was therefore simply illogical that the same Mr Tinubu would attack the Buhari administration for not knowing the road.
"In contrast, throughout this campaign up till now, Tinubu has consistently said PDP and all the opposition parties put together do not know the road to prosperity for Nigeria.
"He also said the competing candidates do not have the track record he amassed as governor of Lagos.
"As the front runner in the presidential race, Tinubu has promised to implement his robust action plan that will bring socio-economic prosperity to our country," Mr Onanuga said.
He added that the APC PCC was, however, not unmindful of the antics of some media organisations to deliberately misrepresent Mr Tinubu.
Mr Onanuga said that such media organisations accentuate anything they thought would project Mr Tinubu in a bad light since the beginning of the electioneering circle.
"All the machinations of the opposition elements to put a wedge between President Buhari and Tinubu will fail.
"APC, its leadership and President Buhari are strongly united behind our presidential candidate.
"All the sponsored innuendos, invented and imaginary discord in APC which the failed PDP and their media organs hope to cash on to win the coming election will blow up in their faces," he said.
