Former Minister of Culture and Tourism, Femi Fani Kayode, has countered the claim by a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu on why Muhammadu Buhari didn’t pick him as his running mate in 2015.
Tinubu had revealed that Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, stopped the President from picking him as his running mate in the 2015 presidential election.
Tinubu’s claims were contained in a book titled ‘Against the Run of Play,’ written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi.
He said their reason was that Christians in the North would not accept a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
“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 party 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,” Tinubu had said.
Reacting however, Fani-Kayode in a Facebook post on Thursday, said El Rufai had wanted Buhari to pick Fashola, former Lagos governor as his running mate.
He wrote, “The Muslim/Muslim ticket was their plan all along and I was the first to expose and oppose it when I was in APC. That is why I left them.
“Obasanjo opposed it too. Saraki did so behind the scenes. El Rufai did not oppose a Muslim Muslim ticket. It is just that he didn’t want Tinubu. He wanted Fashola.
‘I discussed this matter deeply with every single name that I mentioned here when I was with them. The whole thing sickened me.”
