Buhari Threatened To Step Down As Presidential Candidate If Tinubu Insisted On Being VP

Call it the many nights of long knives, it still may
not sufficiently capture the intrigues, betrayals,
sellouts and drama that typified the various
meetings which ultimately culminated in the choice
of a former Attorney-General and Commissioner
for Justice in Lagos State, Professor Yemi
Osinbajo, as the All Progressives Congress (APC)
deputy to the presidential standard-bearer of
the party, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari.

With barely 24 hours to the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) deadline for the
submission of names of candidates by political
parties, the name Osinbajo, which had been making
the rounds as the alternative choice, finally got
the official stamp of approval of the general to
run with him on the party’s ticket.

Practically all but the last meeting convened for
the choice of a running mate for Buhari had
failed for one reason: the reported interest of a
former governor of Lagos State and one of the
national leaders of the party, Bola Tinubu, who
made a poor show of concealing his desire for the
job.

At each of those meetings, Tinubu, who yesterday
said he turned down Buhari’s offer to be his
running mate, was said to have made the
emergence of a generally acceptable choice that
excluded him impossible.

For Tinubu, party sources alleged that he saw his
probable ascension to the vice-presidency as an
opportunity to be “compensated” for his
incontrovertible role in the establishment of a
strong and viable APC, a move other members of
the party, including the governors, had opposed on
the grounds that he would be a hard sell to the
Nigerian public.

To exemplify his all-consuming desire for the job,
Tinubu was said to have attended one of the
meetings with the South-west leaders of the
party last weekend and told his audience a story
of how Buhari had agreed to field him as his
running mate.

According to him, all he needed was the consent
of those at the meeting in writing, in order to
convince the retired general that he (Tinubu) also
had the support of the South-west caucus to
emerge as his running mate.

Ostensibly, however,
he was purported to have conjured the story
following the honour accorded him by Buhari to
choose the running mate and put himself forward
for the position. But this, a majority of those at
the meeting saw through, compelling one of
governors to say if his statement was true,
“Buhari has picked you,then you don’t need our
signatures to get our support”.

Unfortunately for him, some of those at the
meeting were uncomfortable with the fact that he
wanted to get them to sign a communiqué, which
he would have taken to Buhari, informing him that
his people in the South-west, majority of whom
are governors, had asked that he be fielded as
the vice-presidential candidate. In Tinubu’s
estimation, the story would have been difficult to
refute in order not to embarrass him nor put the
party in a fix.

When it became clear to Tinubu that his people had
effectively opposed his emergence as Buhari’s
deputy, he reportedly broke down in tears,
moaning that their stance would render him
insignificant in the scheme of things if he was
neither allowed the opportunity to field himself
nor present a candidate of his choice.

“We told him
frankly: ‘Look, we love you as our oga but
Nigerians don’t.’ We told him we could not sell him
because one, he is a Muslim and two, other issues
might emerge from the woodworks that could be
embarrass him and the party.“When it suddenly
dawned on him that his goal was slipping from his
grasp, he broke down in tears,” alleged a source,
who also claimed that it was at that point
everyone gave in to his demands that the post of
Buhari’s running mate be zoned to the South-west
and he should be allowed to pick someone else in
his stead.

To political observers, Tinubu, with his overt
desire, covert antics and brinksmanship, may have
secured a diminished victory.
But of greater significance, he has had a taste of
what it means to manage and square up against
the contending interests and forces at play in a
truly large national party.In the days of yore, he
could dictate the pace and rhythm of his more
malleable, regional Action Congress (AC) and later
Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

With APC, he
was shown that he can no longer pull the strings
like a puppet master behind the scenes as he
deems fit.With Osinbajo’s selection for the number
two slot, it remains to be seen if Tinubu’s latest
gamble will do his party and Buhari’s chances in
the contest against the Jonathan/Sambo ticket
any good. In the final analysis, the answer to this
lies with the Nigerian electorate.