How APC won 2015 presidential elections - Lai Mohammed

THE ruling All Progres­sives Congress (APC) said the transparent and open manner in which its presi­dential candidate, Muham­madu Buhari, emerged was the major factor in its even­tual victory in the March 28 presidential election rather than money politics.

The party stated that there was no way the APC would have received the kind of widespread sup­port within and outside the party in the run-up to the elections, if the process that led to Buhari’s emer­gence were not open and transparent.

Speaking at the 55th An­nual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Asso­ciation (NBA), in Abuja, the National Publicity Sec­retary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed stated that during the campaign, the PDP outgunned the APC on many flanks, including money spent on campaign and advertisements.

“The then ruling party outspent the opposition in the area of advertisements, whether in the print or electronic media. Accord­ing to a report credited to Compliance and Content Monitoring Limited, out of the N3.23 billion that was spent on political campaign advertisement during the last campaign, the PDP spent N2.5 billion or 77 per cent of the total, compared to N728 million or 23 per cent by the APC.

“The PDP also hired the best of columnists and talk­ing heads that popped up ubiquitously at many radio and television stations, in addition to floating all sorts of organisations that cam­paigned for it, even before the official takeoff of the campaign. Despite being outgunned on all flanks, however, the opposition remained focused and kept strictly to its script, refus­ing to allow the PDP to set agenda for it.

Mohammed said the les­son, “is that no amount of money or sweet-mouthed salesmen can sell a bad product. A government in power swims or sinks with its performance. This will have a salutary effect on the electioneering for fu­ture elections.”

The APC scribe, who spoke on, “The Role of Political Parties in Sustain­ing the Gains of the 2015 General Elections: The APC Perspective” stated that equally important in the success of the party at the polls was the choice of Prof. Yemi Osinbanjo as the presidential running mate to Buhari.

“The choice of the run­ning mate to Buhari pushed our party to the limit, be­cause that choice needed to address the religious concerns that were raised before the elections, as well as meet the geo-po­litical considerations that emerged with the choice of Buhari.

Impressive as the re­sume of Prof. Osinbajo is, his choice would not have complemented that of Bu­hari if it had not responded to the religious and region­al concerns that were raised at the time,” he said.

The Sun