A senior presidential aide has challenged the claim that former President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 electoral success was solely due to his established popularity in the North.
In a statement shared via social media, the aide emphasized that although Buhari consistently polled about 12 million votes in the North, he failed in three consecutive presidential elections before 2015. According to him, it was the strategic influence and support of Bola Ahmed Tinubu during the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary election in 2014 that made the difference.
He explained that at the party’s presidential primaries held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos, Tinubu rallied APC governors and key Southwest delegates to back Buhari. Without that support, he argued, Buhari would not have clinched the party’s ticket—let alone become President.
The aide further criticized comments made by a former government official at a recent public event, describing them as a distortion of political history. “It does a disservice to the facts of our democratic journey to overlook Tinubu’s critical role,” he stated.
