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Buhari knows he wouldn’t have been President without me – Tinubu
President Bola Tinubu, on Thursday maintained his position that Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor rode on his back to office in 2015, a point he clearly made some three years ago in Abeokuta, Ogun State, with a graphic picture of events that led to the outcome.
At a rally in the ancient city, where he had gone to campaign for the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), ahead of its convention in 2022, Tinubu had told the story of how his political engineering led to Buhari’s presidency in his now famous emilokan speech.
He said: “If not for me talking to you today, Buhari would not have been President. It has been over 25 years since I have been serving them. The one sitting behind me, Dapo Abiodun, could not have become the governor without me.
“Since the time we started with the Action Congress AC, Action Congress of Nigeria ACN and now, the All Progressives Congress APC, I have wanted to contest for President since those times.
“This is me telling you, between my life and God Almighty, Buhari called me to be his Vice President. He said because the first time he contested, he picked Okadigbo, flamboyant, Catholic, but Nigerians didn’t vote for him.
“The second time, he picked another Igbo, Ume Ezeoke, Nigerians didn’t vote for him; that if he goes to bring the Pope to run as his vice, 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 was why he wanted me as his vice, 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 PDP, Saraki now saw that those from the PDP will not get anything if Buhari, a Muslim, becomes the President and me, also a Muslim, becomes his vice, he won’t get the senate president and the senate president cannot also be a Muslim, that was how they started the campaign of calumny against me.”
Tinubu returned to the story again on Thursday against the backdrop of the controversy raise by Boss Mustapha, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), whose comments on Wednesday, appeared to debunk the President’s claims, as he held that contrary, his contribution to the coming of Buhari, was meagre.
At the launch of the book: According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience, written by Garba Shehu, who served Buhari for eight years as spokesman, the former SGF, had recounted how the Tinubu and other camps in the APC contributed only a paltry 3.5million to 15million votes that the former President scored to pick up the nation’s number job.
Acknowledging the effect of the merger of the political forces that came into play to create the outcome, he said: “President Buhari’s integrity, national stature and disciplined messaging were central to that breakthrough.
“Not only that, for us in the ACN, I do not intend to stir any controversy, but I will make bold to state this – that the merger in 2013 was midwifed to present a Buhari or create a Buhari Presidency because we looked at the statistics of the votes that were coming to the table. In the 2003 election, it was the Obasanjo/Buhari presidential contest where Buhari recorded 2.7 million votes. In the next election, he got 12.7 million votes. In 2007, it came to 6.6 million, it went back to 12.2 million in 2011.
“When we were conceptualising the merger, what would give us a head-start and obviously, it was at the back of our consciousness that the merger with the CPC, though it had only one state, the ACN had six states, ANPP three states, and when you sum up the total votes that gave us the presidency in 2015, the aggregate of the total votes was 15.4 million. So, basically, what we brought to the table after the merger outside the Buhari 12.5 million votes was three million.”
Regardless the graphic explanation, Tinubu, who conveyed his own position through Bayo Onanuga, his spokesman, maintained that without the merger there would not have been a Buhari Presidency, which ran from 2015 to 2023.
Onanuga, Special Adviser on Media and Strategy, who was a guest on Prime Time, a public affairs programme on ARISE NEWS Television network, though excused the former SGF, saying his comments were clearly misunderstood and being given different meaning, stressed that without those strategic votes, Buhari would have been nowhere despite the huge votes in question.
Hear him: “It was clear to ACN, a very strategic arm of that alliance, that without additional support, there was no way Buhari could have won the election.
“Yeah, he was getting 12 million votes if you put all the 19 states together, but in the south, Buhari was nowhere. Buhari needed the spread. ACN had six. Buhari got the votes he needed in those six states. They may not be in millions, but there were important votes. He won in all those six states, and he got more than 25 percent. At the end of the day, he won in about 25 states, more than the constitutional requirement of 24 states. Buhari never forgot the help that Tinubu rendered to him. He would not have become President without Tinubu’s assistance.”
The echoes of the drums rolled out to celebrate the rescue of the 44 teachers and students, kidnapped from some schools in Oyo State, after 56 days in the bush, would surely be disrupted abruptly, with the divergent echoes of a fresh abduction, this time coming from Kogi State.
Reports indicate that the gunmen, struck on Tuesday at the Government Secondary School, Odo-Ekina, in Dekina Local Government Area of the state, abducting four students, the school principal and a National Examinations Council (NECO) ad hoc staff member.
Authorities of the Kogi State Police Command, who immediately unleashed their operatives in hot pursuit of the abductors, said the attack occurred at about 5:25 p.m. while the students were writing their NECO examination.
Saliu Oyiza Afusat, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) and spokesman of the command, said a combined team of police personnel and other security agencies has launched a search-and-rescue operation following the incident.
Informing that one of the students was actually rescued immediately, she said efforts were ongoing to secure the release of the remaining victims and apprehend the attackers, adding that Naziru Bello Kankarofi, the state Commissioner of Police, alongside the Brigade Commander and the State Security Adviser to the Governor, Commodore Jerry Omodara (Rtd), were already on the way to the scene for an on-the-spot assessment.
Oil prices are expected to go down now with the announcement of Donald Trump, US President that he will no longer impose a 20 percent “safe passage” fee on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The POTUS, hinged his reversal of the decision on the intervention from some Gulf countries, who pleaded with him not to toe the line due to the massive economic impact the decision would make on the region.
Indeed, oil prices had shot up immediately Trump announced the new levy on Monday while declaring the US ‘the guardians of the Hormuz strait,’ a measure which he said was to pay for the cost of guarding the volatile area in order keep supply of oil flowing.
Reports said that Gulf allies of the US worked frantically to get Trump on the phone in time to talk him out of the idea altogether, while a flurry of appeals came from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar.
In response, the POTUS, posting on his Truth Social platform, wrote: “Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States.”
Trump, who said the investments would be “MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future,” added that the deals would see factories, plants, and equipment pour into the US at “Historic levels.”
The Gulf nations have committed to invest trillions of dollars in the US, though it remains unclear how much of that they will actually spend over the next several years.
Meanwhile, the US continues to bomb Iran in what appears to be a resumption of active conflict between both countries, despite an ongoing roadmap to end the conflict.
Reports say operatives of the Osun State Police Command, and those of the Department of State Services (DSS) had tracking the trail of Adeniyi Adeyemi, controversial Director General of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), for weeks, before he was eventually pulled out of his hole on Tuesday.
However, the duo, were said to have pulled back after failing to track him through his mobile phones, which he had reportedly switched off for about two days, making it difficult to locate him, leaving the stage for the members of the Police Intelligence Response Team (PI-RT) led by Moses Lohor, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP).
Lohor, said to have previously served as the Commander of the Anti-Kidnapping Squad of Osun State, and reported to have been involved in high-profile security operations and controversies, after taken over fielded his men to pick up signals from their well-oiled signal networks.
Regarded by many Osun residents as one of the key security officers who contributed significantly to the peace and stability enjoyed in Ilesa and other parts of the state during his tenure, he was said to have relied on his contacts before his transfer out of the state, said to have raised concerns from the public about the security situation he would be leaving behind.
His exit from the state was said to be hinged on an incident in 2024, in which he allegedly shot one Iyanda Alowonle, then Chairman of Osun State Motor Transport System, in the stomach at the police station in the state prompting an order for his arrest by then Inspector General of Police (IGP).
His effort was said to have paid off when he successfully tracked down the controversial PFIPC, boss, who was seen on Tuesday evening, in a shot video on social media undergoing interrogation, and eventually handed him over to Ibrahim Gotan, Commissioner of Police in the state.
The PUNCH quoted one of the sources as saying: “The arrest (of Adeyemi) took place on Tuesday morning by the IRT squad, who immediately moved him to Abuja. After he was arrested, he was taken to Ibadan and from there to Abuja.”
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