A presidential aspirant and national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Thursday, claimed that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), wanted him to be his running mate in the 2015 presidential election.
The former governor of Lagos State said this at the Presidential Lodge in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, when he was addressing the APC delegates ahead of the party’s primary.
Narrating the circumstances that led to the emergence of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo as the vice president, Tinubu said Buhari had offered him a running mate ticket, but some blocs rose against it.
The former governor noted that he was asked to submit three names for the running mate position and that he penciled down Yemi Cardoso, Wale Edun, and Osinbajo. He added that he later settled for Osinbajo as the running mate.
“You have not heard this from me before. This is the first place I am saying this,” Tinubu, who addressed the delegates in Yoruba, said.
“This is me telling you between me and God Almighty, Buhari called me to be his Vice President. He said because the first time he contested, he picked (Chuba) Okadigbo, but Nigerians didn’t vote for him.
“The second time, he picked another Igbo, (Edwin) Ume-Ezeoke, Nigerians didn’t vote for him, that if he went to bring the Pope to run as his deputy, Nigerians won’t vote for him, but you, Bola Tinubu, you have six governors, you have never lost an election before, come and be my vice”.
“He knew all the calculations then favoured us, that is why he wanted me as his deputy, but I told him to let us build the party first. And when we finished building the party after we brought in people from the Peoples Democratic Party, (Bukola) Saraki now saw that those from the PDP would not get anything if Buhari, a Muslim, became the president and me, also a Muslim, became his deputy, he won’t get the Senate president position and the Senate president cannot also be a Muslim. That was how they started the campaign of calumny against me.
“And I told them that I have a candidate that is a Christian that I can nominate so that the party will not break; that was how I nominated Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. I surrendered my right to him (Osinbajo).
“I was asked to submit three names, Yemi Cardozo, Wale Edun, and Yemi Osinbajo, but I told them if I submit three names, they would play a game, they might make it four and pick the fourth one. I gave them one name and that was Osinbajo.”
Speaking on Buhari’s emergence, he also said, “If not for me that led the warfront, Buhari won’t have emerged. He contested first, second and third times, but lost. He even said on television that he won’t contest again,” Tinubu said.
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