Former governor of Lagos State and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who is also a presidential aspirant in the platform of the party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Thursday said that there was no way President Muhammadu Bihari would have become President without his efforts.
Tinubu added that he contributed immensely to the political struggle that produced Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in 2015.
The former governor of Lagos State categorically said that he nominated Prof Yemi Osinbajo as Buhari’s running mate.
Speaking at the Presidential Lodge in Abeokuta, the state capital, while addressing the APC delegates ahead of the party’s primaries.
Tinubu, who was in company of Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, his Kano State counterpart, Umar Ganduje and former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, said that he made the revelations for the first time in Ogun State, the home state of Osinbajo, one his rivals for the APC presidential ticket.
He said that Buhari had offered him a running mate ticket, but some blocs rose against it, fanning the embers that a Muslim-Muslim ticket could not fly.
The APC National Leader also said that when he was asked to submit three names for running mate, he pencilled down Yemi Kadoso, Wale Edun and Yemi Osinbajo.
He added that he later settled for Osinbajo as running mate, adding, while speaking in Yoruba language, “You have not heard this from me before. This is the first place I am saying this.”
Speaking on Buhari’s emergence, he said, “If not me that led the war front, Buhari won’t have emerged. He contested first, second and third time, but lost. He even said on television that he won’t contest again.
“But I went to his home in Katsina, I told him you would contest and win, but you won’t joke with the matters of the Yorubas.
“Since he has emerged, I have not been appointed minister. I didn’t get contract.
“This time, it’s Yoruba’s turn and in Yorubaland, it’s my tenure.”
Tinubu also said that without God and him, Governor Dapo Abiodun would not have emerged in the 2019 election.
He added, “Dapo, who’s sitting down here, could he have become governor without me! We were at the stadium, they tore all his posters. Even the party flag, they didn’t want to hand it over to him, I was the one who brought it.
“If he wants to meet God at the right place, he must know that without God and me, he would not have become governor.”
In his remarks, Abiodun, who had earlier declared his support for Osinbajo’s candidature, refused to endorse Tinubu.
He told Tinubu that delegates from the state would do “the right thing” at the convention.
Abiodun described Tinubu as a political warrior, serial winner and strategist.
