President Muhammadu Buhari's nephew and close confidant Mamman Daura asserts that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rigged the 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential elections.
He asserted that massive electoral fraud and a broad decline in faith in the system contributed to Buhari's breakdown during his 2011 presidential campaign.
This was made clear in his documentary about the current president, "Essential Muhammadu Buhari."
Daura details the president's three unsuccessful bids for the position of president as well as his political career (in 2003, 2007, and 2011).
Buhari's attempts to become president in 2003 (when he lost to Olusegun Obasanjo), 2007 (when he lost to Umar Yar'Adua), and 2011 were unsuccessful (losing to Goodluck Jonathan).
The president said that this would be his third and last attempt for the presidency at a campaign rally in 2011. I won't offer myself again for election to the post of president, he had said after wiping away his tears.
In the documentary, Daura asserted that the president wept "in sympathy for the system (electoral) in the country," not out of fear of losing.
He said that he approached Buhari's attorney after the 2007 election to get the state results, which led him to conclude that all three elections had been rigged.
“…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.