Laolu Akande, a former presidential spokesman has slammed Boss Mustapha, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation over his remark that Muhammadu Buhari did not become president with the support of Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Akande, who was the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, spoke on Thursday on Channels Television programme Morning Show, said the comment of Mustapha was simply “unnecessary”, adding that the there was no way Buhari could have become president without ” a hand shake across the Niger”.
“I don’t know what Boss Mustapha was trying to achieve” with such remark Akande said.
The former presidential aide spoke after Temitope Ajayi, the Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Publicity accused the former SGF of trying to re-write history.
The magazine reports that Mustapha made the comment on Wednesday in Abuja, the nation’s capital during a book launch, titled “According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience” written by Garba Shehu, a media aide to former President Buhari.
During the event attended by key officials of the Buhari administration and those of the incumbency, Mustapha in his keynote address on the contribution of former President Buhari to national development , said Tinubu did not condescendingly make Buhari president contrary to wide spread belief.
Mustapha claimed that Buhari’s integrity and popularity among Nigerians enabled him to win the election, saying the former president already had “12 million” votes in the kitty before the merger of the legacy political parties which formed the All Progressives Congress, APC, which defeated President Jonathan that year.
He said, “For us in the ACN, I do not intend to stir any controversy, but I will make bold to state this, that the merger in 2013 was midwifed to present a Buhari or create a Buhari Presidency because we looked at the statistics of the votes that were coming to the table.
“In the 2003 election, it was the Obasanjo/Buhari presidential contest where Buhari recorded 2.7 million votes. In the next election, he got 12.7 million votes. In 2007, it came to 6.6 million, it went back to 12.2 million in 2011.
“When we were conceptualizing the merger, what would give us a headstart and obviously, it was at the back of our consciousness that the merger with the CPC, though it had only one state, the ACN had six states, ANPP three states, and when you sum up the total votes that gave us the presidency in 2015, the aggregate of the total votes was 15.4 million.
“So, basically, what we brought to the table after the merger outside the Buhari’s 12.5 million votes was three million.”
Reacting on his social media account, Ajayi said the fact that Buhari lost the presidency on three different occasions was a pointer that he could have lost again without Tinu
Buhari “lost the presidential elections in 2003, 2007, and 2011 before 2015,” Ajayi said.
“There is no way he would have won the election to be president without first becoming the presidential candidate of his party APC.
Adding that “General Buhari would not have won the APC primary election at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos, in 2014 without President Tinubu, who mobilised the APC governors and the South West delegates to move Buhari’s way.
“Former SGF Boss 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 President 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,,.” said
Recall that Tinubu had during one of his campaign trains in Abeokuta, Ogun state in 2023 publicly boasted that Buhari could not have become president without his help. He claimed that Buhari was able to ride on his shoulder to the Presidency having failed on three previous occasions.
“If not for me talking to you today, Buhari would not have been president,” Tinubu said.
Tinubu had made the remark then following suggestions that some officials in the Buhari administration were trying to scuttle his ambition to become the leader of the country.
He claimed that Buhari ran to him after failing on three different occasions to lead the country.
Buhari ran for president of Nigeria on the platform and support of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, in 2003 and 2007, and on the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC) platform in 2011 and lost on those occasions.
But in 2015, after his party , the CPC merged with defunct ACN, led by Tinubu, some elements in the PDP, APGA the former military leader swept to power in an unprecedented manner that shocked many people in the country, who said the victory was only possible with the support of Tinubu, a former Governor of Lagos state.
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