Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who is the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has revealed that Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Senate president, Bukola Saraki, worked against his emergence as vice president.
There was speculation that the former Lagos governor would be Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate until Professor Yemi Osinbajo was finally nominated for this position.
This revelation was contained in a book titled ‘Against the Run of Play,’ written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi, The Punch reports.
Tinubu noted that members of the Peoples Democratic Party who defected to the APC ahead of the 2015 elections argued that Christians from the north would not vote for a Muslim-Muslim candidacy and this could jeopardise the party’s victory.
The APC chieftain revealed that El-Rufai had also put forth the name of Pastor Tunde Bakare of Latter Rain to be Buhari’s running mate.
“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.”
He revealed that some governors and senators who had defected from the PDP to APC asked him if he going to be Buhari’s running mate on the eve of the primary election but said he evaded the question.
“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 revealed that Buhari asked him to submit three names for the position of vice president but he tendered only the name of Osinbajo.
“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.”
