• Tinubu made Buhari President in 2015, Okechukwu, Ajayi reply Mustapha
Special Assistant to former President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, has offered an insight as to why his principal rejected a 10 per cent kickback from a reputable construction giant in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, said Buhari’s stroll-in-the-park performance, which earned him the 2015 All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential ticket, would not have been possible without Tinubu.
In the same vein, a founding member of APC, Osita Okechukwu, countered the claim by former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, that Tinubu did not make Buhari the President in 2015.
Buhari served as Head of State between December 31, 1983, and August 27, 1985, as well as democratically-elected President between May 29, 2015 and May 29, 2023, under APC.
Shehu, in his book, According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience, launched last Tuesday in Abuja, also recalled how the President directed him to return a diamond-plated wristwatch gifted to him by a giant construction company.
According to the book, the Board of Directors of the company (name withheld) handling government contracts such as roads, railways, bridges and facilities management, visited him (Buhari) at the State House. Buhari told them: “We have been informed that percentage cuts (10 per cent or more) are built into your contracts, to be shared among government leaders and civil servants. This must stop. We will not accept kickbacks.
“We have equally been informed that you, as handlers of major contracts, build homes for government leaders, buy expensive cars and maintain them for the beneficiaries; when they or close relations fall ill, you take them to hospitals abroad, including the use of air ambulances when that is warranted, at no cost to them. Our finding is that nothing you give is free.
All such costs are built into government contracts. We don’t want that to continue.”
Shehu noted that Buhari told them to end the padding of contract costs.
The Kano-born journalist remarked that on another occasion, a Nigerian-American icon in the global luxury watch and jewellery industry stated that when he presented the timepiece to Buhari, he (Buhari) commended the success of the brand overseas, advised him to keep the Nigerian flag flying “but directed that the gift be politely returned. I dutifully did so.”
In a post shared on his X yesterday, Ajayi argued that Buhari lost the presidential elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011, before 2015, despite his “12 million captive Northern votes”.
The presidential aide stated that it was Tinubu’s timely intervention that enabled Buhari to prevail, as the former governor of Lagos State mobilised APC governors and the South West delegates to secure victory for Buhari at the APC primary election held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos in 2014.
He stated: “Let us even leave the general election that Buhari won to become President in 2015. There is no way he would have won the election to be President without first becoming the presidential candidate of APC.
“Mustapha did a disservice to our recent history with that unnecessary glib at the book launch today. Every effort and support that made it possible for Buhari to win should never be diminished. Buhari had his 12 million captive Northern votes, yet he lost three presidential elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011.”
Speaking on Wednesday at the unveiling of Shehu’s book, the former SGF had stated that Buhari already had 12 million existing votes and that the merger of the legacy parties merely contributed three million votes to his victory at the 2015 presidential election.
However, in a statement yesterday, Okechukwu submitted that Tinubu laid the groundwork for the golden victory votes, which led to Buhari becoming President in 2015.
“May I hereby plead that there is no need for controversy, because my friend, Boss Mustapha, should be excused as he was not with us in 2003 when Buhari began the presidential race. He was in ACN and did not know the water that passed the realpolitik bridge. This is why he relied only on mathematical calculations of votes in 2015 and not on realpolitik.” Okechukwu retorted.
He recalled that in Buhari’s first contest in 2003, the submission at the Presidential Election Tribunal “was that Buhari won majority votes not only the 12.7 million, which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allocated to him, the ground upon which Sylvester Nsofor’s minority judgment rested on that slip numbering was jettisoned.”
