What we did to defeat PDP in the presidential elections – El-Rufai reveals
He spoke to YNaija shortly after the new President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari received his certificate of return in Abuja where he stated that the new-ruling party was a project of God, which came to fruition through divine intervention.
El-Rufai said: “By June 2013, it became clear APC was going to happen. The hurdles leading to a formidable opposition had been cleared and we knew Jonathan was going. All the hurdles of previous efforts at alliance and merger has been crossed, unseen hands of God cleared them.”
“APC was God’s project and we were just doing our little bits here and there. That didn’t make me lay back and say God will do it, we kept ensuring that it was a properly organised political party. It was clear to many of us that were part of the merger discussion that there was a divine intervention which would have long term consequences on our democratic growth.”
The former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory also harped on the strategy employed by the APC, while adding that the party chose to focus on issues during its campaign.
He said: “We hired consultants to work with the party on strategy, hired a communication company. We tried to create and run a 21st century political party and we agreed we would not attack but focus on issues since we knew the PDP had no record to run on. The core issues we addressed and used to run were insecurity, impunity, economy and corruption. We focused on issues for the country and jobs for the youth.”
Speaking further, El-Rufai said the party never envisaged a defeat at any point in time during the campaign, stressing that the two major concerns were the likelihood of a ‘pre-arranged military takeover and engineered crisis’.
“The hand of God was in INEC in ensuring that PVC and electoral process followed due course because without these two, the magic of 2011 would have happened. At no point did we think we would lose. The only fear was a possibility of a pre-arranged military takeover and engineered crisis.
“The last poll before February 12 elections showed that we were 55 points and they were 40 points. Even after they spent billions of dollars in the six weeks period, the polls didn’t change much. There was only about a one point dent.”
El-rufai also spoke on the actions of former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, who had a meltdown during the announcement of the result at the International Conference Centre. “He just made a fool of himself. It was a self destructive move and I feel sorry for him,” he added.
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