A longtime ally of former President Muhammadu Buhari, Farouk Aliyu, has disagreed with recent claims by former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, regarding the role of President Bola Tinubu in Buhari’s 2015 election victory. Mustapha, speaking during a book launch in Abuja on Wednesday, had argued that Tinubu did not make Buhari president.
According to him, Buhari already had an established support base of 12 million votes, and the merger of legacy parties that formed the All Progressives Congress (APC) only added around three million more votes.
However, Aliyu, who was a guest on Politics Today on Thursday, dismissed Mustapha’s position as inaccurate. He emphasised that while Buhari’s 12 million votes were consistent, they had never been enough to secure a presidential victory until the 2015 alliance with Tinubu. My senior brother, Boss Mustapha, certainly got it wrong because I can’t even remember where he was at that time,” Aliyu said. Aliyu accused some persons in the Buhari administration of trying to rewrite history despite not being present during the formative and decisive political struggles of the time.
He said, “Unfortunately, there are many of these Buhari converts who were not with Buhari. I don’t want to mention names but most of them happened by accident or fate to become what they became, and they are now trying to deconstruct history. It is not true.”
Aliyu went on to credit Tinubu with playing a vital role in Buhari’s emergence both as the APC presidential candidate and eventual winner of the 2015 election.
“Tinubu assisted, contributed, and helped Muhammadu Buhari to get the ticket and by extension win the election, because he followed us to campaign all over the country. So, I don’t want issues to be created between Buhari and Tinubu, because there are no issues,” he said.
Aliyu also recalled serving as the returning officer for Buhari during the APC primary in Lagos that led to Buhari’s emergence as the party’s standard bearer, and he highlighted the behind-the-scenes support that Tinubu provided during that process. Aliyu rejected claims that Buhari did not repay Tinubu’s support in the lead-up to the 2023 election. He argued that if Buhari wanted to sabotage the APC’s victory, he had several tools at his disposal to do so, but chose not to.
“If Muhammadu Buhari did not want APC to win the election, he would have done several things to ensure that they don’t win,” he affirmed.
Looking ahead to the 2027 general elections, Aliyu gave assurances that Buhari would once again support Tinubu’s candidacy, stressing that there was no rift between the two leaders.
Addressing the growing coalition of opposition parties seeking to unseat Tinubu in 2027, Aliyu acknowledged that it was their constitutional right to contest elections. However, he sounded a note of warning that the APC was fully prepared to resist any threat to its dominance.
“We will put sand in their garri,” he said, using a popular Nigerian idiom to express political resistance.