Saraki and El-Rufai went behind me to kill my Vice-President's ambition - Tinubu

In the book titled: “Against the Run of Play,” that is yet to be launched, written by Olusegun Adeniyi, who is the Editorial Board Chairman of ThisDay, the Former Lagos State Governor and the current National Leader of the ruling party All Progressives Congress (APC), Ahmed Bola Tinubu, claimed that Senate President Bukola Saraki and the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, convinced President Muhammadu Buhari of not picking as his running mate in the last presidential election held in 2015.

Tinubu said that Saraki and El-Rufai with some other political figures who decamped to APC few months before the elections, went against the design of the ruling party to make him the running mate of the president.

According to the Party leader, the politicians maintained that running with President Buhari would produce a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket and that could cost the party victory during the elections.

Tinubu said: “What they 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 part 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.

Nasir el-Rufai was also selling the same argument within the CPC (the defunct Congress for Progressive Change) because at that point, he still wanted to have Pastor Bakare brought in as Buhari’s running mate.”

Tinubu futher said that President Buhari later asked him to suggest three persons for the Vice President's ticket but he presented only Prof Yemi Osinbajo as his final choice. “I backed down because I did not want to be depicted as causing a problem. I backed away from the position in order to offer Buhari a name I once raised with him in 2011: that of Professor Yemi Osibanjo".