I did not know that Mallam Nasir El-Rufai will say it himself that he did not support BAT at the primary but only wanted presidency to go back to south.
What the man said is the truth, but not the whole truth.
The whole truth is that as a NW person and a SW person were concluding their eight years in office as president and vice president respectively, it will not be possible for the SW and NW to produce the next president and vice president
And because he had an ambition to be vice president which is not a crime, he gave Amaechi support and that support started during Oshiomole/Obaseki brouhaha to place Amaechi in good stead.
He had hoped for a SS/NW ticket but Abdullahi Adamu who they brought in originally because of Amaechi had listened to the cabal in the villa who wanted another northerner to succeed Buhari and the northerner they wanted was Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, not Ahmad Lawan. Adamu betrayed them.
They only wanted Lawan to hold the APC ticket for easy ride for the ex-Waziri.
El-Rufai thought that Buhari would pick a candidate because that was the only way Amaechi would have won but when it was clear that fPMB would allow only a free and fair primary election, he opted for Tinubu because he was going to win except there was no election.
Zulum who he mentioned in the interview had no one he was supporting initially too and I said that once or twice here but he joined the Tinubu train earlier than El-Rufai.
Listen to Mallam Nasir El-Rufai on May 15, 2022 when Amaechi took his campaign to Kaduna:
“I told you when you made that pledge to Asiwaju that others may not come, because of what you have done. You made that choice without listening to anyone else. Today you have seen the difference. You’ve heard Amaechi, you’ve seen what he has done. And he has brought a very strong security team. So you know what will happen with our security if he is in charge.”
What are you going to do? Who are you supporting now? You have a huge burden on you, and you must choose what is best for Kaduna and for Nigeria,”
What is best for Kaduna? Did you read that? That was where he hinted about his vice presidential ambition and even if he did not say it openly, that was it but he can not be blamed for nursing an ambition because like he said again last night, Tinubu was never his friend and they were never close.
Shettima, Akume, Wamakko and Ganduje were four of the most prominent political leaders from the north who supported Tinubu before he even declared to run.
Ganduje, at a point, made his deputy run the affairs of the Kano state government as he committed his entire time to campaigning for Tinubu.
And after Tinubu emerged and it was time to pick a running mate and a few people asked if El-Rufai would be considered, my response to them was that a NW/SW presidency will not be replaced by a SW/NW ticket.
That will not work. So that alone ruled out Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. Tinubu had approached Buhari to nominate but fPMB said he should go ahead and pick his running mate by himself. Tinubu then threw it to the governors who agreed that it should go to the NE and that was how Shettima emerged. He did not scheme for it.
The other point I mentioned was that El-Rufai does not have the temperament to be a no two to anyone.
It is either he heads whichever office he occupies or he does not hold any office at all and I knew what I was talking about. Some people are like that.
If El-Rufai himself had not said that he did not support Tinubu at the primary, there would not have been any reason for me to say what we knew happened behind the curtains.
The only part that he did not mention is that he initially supported Amaechi because he wanted to be a vice president to a president from SS which was more appropriate and acceptable to being a running mate to a SW man as I had earlier said above.
If Buhari had imposed Amaechi, El-Rufai and Buratai would have slugged it out on who became his running mate.
It is however on record that after that failed, El-Rufai came on Tinubu’s train as that was the only winning train.
It is for this reason that I always laugh at those who said that Buhari did not support Tinubu.
Buhari knew that Tinubu would trounce all others and when he said, three or four days to the primary election through Adesina, that he wished that a TRUE PARTY man emerged from the process, he was referring to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
El-Rufai will continue to grant more interviews and that will give some of us the opportunity to say what we know transpired without any denial from any angle.
