President Buhari on Monday maintained that Nigeria is better and stronger as one nation.
He restated this at a Colloquium to mark All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed TInubu’s 69th birthday.
The Colloquium, the 12th in the series, was a hybrid, holding virtually as well as at the Coronation Hall of the Government House in Kano where some guests led by host Governor Abdullahi Ganduje and the celebrator were seated.
President Buhari who participated virtually as Chairman, spoke from the Presidential Villa in Abuja. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo spoke from the Villa.
He said “despite occasional inter-ethnic tensions in our national history, it seems to me that we have all agreed on one point that, notwithstanding our diversity of ethnicity, culture, language and religion, Nigerians are better together; even stronger together.
The President said the drive for unity “has been a constant factor in Tinubu’s outstanding political career, from the time he served in the short-lived senate of the Third Republic to his involvement in the struggle for the actualisation of the June 12 mandate of the late Chief MKO Abiola, to his much-acclaimed period of service as Governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007.
“The ranks of Asiwaju’s political collaborators, whether as party members, comrades in the struggle, members of his cabinet, or his advisers, assistants and political associates, have always reflected a pan-Nigeria attitude.
“I believe all of us here can also confirm that the same outlook of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and other like-minded Nigerians eventually made possible the coalition of four political parties into what we now see as our great party, the All Progressives Congress,’’ he said.
