A National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola
Ahmed Tinubu, has alleged that the President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar
Bukola Saraki, and the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai,
worked against the plan to make him President Muhammadu Buhari’s running
mate in the 2015 presidential election.
Tinubu stated that
Saraki, El-Rufai and other stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party,
who defected to the APC in the build-up to the 2015 elections,
instigated Buhari and some APC chieftains not to pick him as the
would-be Vice-President.
The APC leader’s comments were contained
in a book: “Against the Run of Play,” written by the Chairman, Editorial
Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi.
Tinubu, a former governor of
Lagos State, said his opponents persuaded Buhari to look for another
running mate on the grounds that Christians in the North would not
embrace a Muslim-Muslim ticket and as such could jeopardise the party’s
victory.
The former governor said the arguments put forward by the
party members were not genuine, adding that El-Rufai had the intention
to ensure the emergence of the Serving Overseer of The Latter Rain
Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, as Buhari’s running mate.
Tinubu
added: “What they (Saraki and others from the PDP) did behind my back
was wrong. We always do things as a group. By the time they joined, we
were already too far ahead in our processes but we accommodated them.
“We
agreed to take their state structures and subsume them into the part
and they all had their opportunity to nominate the candidates of their
choices for different political offices.
“But
they went behind to instigate Buhari and some other people in the party
against me on the pretext of religion. That was not right. They were
canvassing arguments that the Christians in the North would not vote for
a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
“Nasir el-Rufai was also selling the same
argument within the CPC (the defunct Congress for Progressive Change)
because at that point, he still wanted to have Pastor Bakare brought in
as Buhari’s running mate.”
Tinubu stated that some senators and
governors then, who defected from the PDP to the APC, met with him on
the eve of the primaries to know if there was an agreement between him
and Buhari to run together.
He said he evaded the inquiry, which
compelled the allies to join him in canvassing for Buhari as the right
presidential candidate of the party.
He said: “I told them that it
was better to resolve such issue after the primaries, but they wanted
to make it a condition for supporting Buhari, which, for me, was very
wrong. I told them I could not insist on this as a condition for my
support for Buhari. I felt that was not right to hold Buhari hostage in
this manner.
“I believe the support that we gave was fundamental
to Buhari clinching the party nomination. Without that support, a
different outcome would have been most likely.”
Tinubu noted that
Buhari later requested him to nominate three persons for the job, but he
(Tinubu) presented only Yemi Osinbajo as his ultimate choice.
“I
backed down because I did not want to be depicted as causing a problem. I
backed away from the position in order to offer Buhari a name I once
raised with him in 2011: that of Professor Yemi Osibanjo,” he added
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