Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) says said he did not ‘expect to win’ the party’s presidential primary held on Tuesday night.
The ruling party’s nominee for the 2023 general election who stated this in his acceptance speech, also said he holds ‘no grudges’ against members of his party who did not support his candidature.
“The competition is now over. Those who did not support me, you have nothing to fear. I hold no grudges and grievances. Let us each agree to join hands in defeating PDP and beat back their retrogressive understanding of Nigeria,” he said.
“They had 16 years, they depleted our resources and left us with hunger. Let us dig their graves by defeating them in the next election because they are the agents of poverty, terror, violence, and lying”, he added.
Tinubu also thanked all the seven aspirants who stepped down for him during the primary.
“You chose to step down through personal ambition and conviction that I will do a better job not because you denigrate yourself but because you trust in my brain that I am a thinker and I am a doer.”
“It is a difficult thing to run for president, the stiff and bold competition you offered made our party stronger, made me better. I am a better man, I am humbled and grateful to all of you.”
The APC presidential nominee in the speech described Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who also contested in the primaries, as a good and supportive pillar to President Muhammadu Buhari.
“We thank you for being steady and a good support to our president,” he said.
To senate president, Ahmad Lawan, Tinubu said, “I would have been a little upset because you compete with me but that is over now since you can easily leak your wounds.”
“You have helped in steering the ship of this nation in the right direction and with your team in the Senate, history is written and will be kind to you.”
He also thanked the APC national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, who many believe was against Tinubu’s emergence.
“To the chairman of our party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, it appeared some weeks back that some newspapers and many people were ready to write the obituary of this party. We put together and pulled ourselves as a cat of nine lives. We poached you to come over, patched the roof, steady the pillars and be a master builder. You came on and you worked hard with the collaboration of others, we worked with you, a new national executive emerged. Here we are; shame on those who were already building the coffin of APC.
“Shame on them, our party is alive. They won’t be able to do the convention but here we are, the first convention to choose a new executive, the governors pulled themselves together and many other leaders, we did break our backs, we are here, very happy and confident and courageous to tell you that the cat that lies down quietly is not a pretension of death but breeding of the energy to devour its enemy. Now we are here, we will roar. We will do it.
‘’We will tell the Poverty Development Party. They call themselves PDP, 16 years of misery, wastefulness, failures, of forgetting about our children of today and tomorrow. We said step aside, be buried, cry and leave the way for us, we will repair our country and will bring it back as strong, the best nation for our children.”
Tinubu, who invited party leaders to join him in the journey, assured security personnel of better days and rewards in real-time.
“I must thank our men and women in uniform, those who make sacrifices of their lives, left family behind, and continue to fight for the survival of this country. Be assured that it is the beginning of that time now you will enjoy reward and enjoy a part of your life, you will not sacrifice for nothing.”
Encouraging religious tolerance in Nigeria, Tinubu said: “We are not the barbaric, blind human beings they think we are. They are setting us against each other. When you were born, you did not hear from the womb whether you will be a male or a female, Christian or Muslim. You were born to your parents and adopted their religions and continued, the faith is in the mind.
‘’We will just need to love one another, build a new society, learn to teach… a new way of life not digging death channels. We are all human beings that must live together. No one religion can eliminate the other.
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