Saraki, El-Rufai Worked Against My Emergence As Buhari’s Running Mate – Tinubu

A National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has accused Senate President Bukola Saraki and the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, of being responsible for his failure to run in the 2015 presidential election as running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari.

Mr. Tinubu alleged that the duo – and other stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who defected to the APC in the build-up to the 2015 elections – worked separately but for one purpose, influencing Buhari not to pick him as the would-be Vice-President.

The APC leader’s comments were contained in a book titled ‘Against the Run of Play,’ written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay Newspaper, Olusegun Adeniyi.

In the book, the former governor accused both politicians of playing the religious card – telling Buhari a Muslim-Muslim ticket would be unpopular.

His words: “What they (Saraki and others from the PDP) 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.”