Mamman Daura, President Muhammadu Buhari’s nephew and close confidant, has claimed that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) extensively manipulated the presidential elections of 2003, 2007, and 2011.
He claimed that Buhari’s meltdown during his 2011 presidential campaign was caused, in part, by widespread electoral cheating and a general loss of confidence in the system.
This was revealed in his documentary “Essential Muhammadu Buhari,” which is focused on the current president.
Daura recounts the political career of the president and his three attempts to become president of the country (in 2003, 2007, and 2011).
Buhari’s presidential bids were unsuccessful in 2003 (losing to Olusegun Obasanjo), 2007 (losing to Umar Yar’Adua), and 2011 (losing to Goodluck Jonathan).
The president announced at a 2011 campaign event that this would be his third and final run for the presidency. He had wiped away his tears and declared, “I will not present myself again for election into the office of the president.”
Daura claimed in the documentary that the president did not cry out of fear of defeat but rather “in pity for the system (electoral) in the country.”
His claim that Buhari’s lawyer was approached by him after the 2007 election to obtain state results led him to believe that all three elections had been manipulated.
“…He gave me the one for Imo State. I went over the result carefully and I saw PDP, Yar’Adua – 25,000 votes and Buhari – 5,000, and so on. All round figures throughout. Even the winner of the election, Yar’Adua had said the election was faulty.”
According to him, Buhari’s decision to unite his political party with two others in 2013 was inspired by his knowledge that all three elections had been fraudulently manipulated.
That the president himself confirmed that the PDP “were so confident that nobody could remove them and they were also not careful” in another part of the video lent credence to his statement.
He explained how the merger between his former party, the Congress for Progressives Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), led by Ogbonnaya Onu, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), led by Bola Tinubu, and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, led by Rochas Okorocha, produced the APC, which ultimately led to his election as president in 2015.
Since then, the APC has held sway, and now the president is preparing to leave office in 2023. He has pledged to leave behind elections that can be trusted as fair and transparent.
