Behind President Bola Tinubu’s emergence as the APC’s 2023 presidential candidate lay a private negotiation few Nigerians knew about, according to former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, who says the late President Muhammadu Buhari harbored deep reservations about Tinubu long before the party’s convention.
In an interview with Symfoni TV released Saturday, Lawal described Buhari as initially resistant to the idea of Tinubu succeeding him, citing religious and ethical concerns about his suitability for the office. But that resistance, Lawal claims, ran up against a political debt Buhari could not easily ignore: Tinubu’s own contributions of manpower and strategy to previous APC campaigns had made him difficult to sideline outright.
It was Lawal, by his own account, who pushed Buhari toward a compromise. Ahead of the June 2022 primary, he says he proposed a deal, urging the president to stay out of the process entirely and let party delegates decide the outcome on their own terms, so that whatever happened at the convention would not be traced back to Buhari’s hand.
Buhari, according to Lawal, did not accept the proposal easily. He reportedly pushed back, arguing that handing the process to Lawal was itself a guarantee that Tinubu would win, given how long the two had worked together and how well Buhari understood Lawal’s methods. Lawal says he countered that even a successful primary bid would not guarantee victory in the general election, since that decision would ultimately rest with Nigerian voters, not with him.
Buhari’s hesitation, Lawal added, extended beyond the primary itself. The former president reportedly wanted assurance that Tinubu would treat their political camp fairly if he went on to win the presidency, a concern Lawal says he addressed by promising to remain positioned as a check on Tinubu’s conduct in office. That assurance, he claims, was ultimately what settled the matter.
Publicly, Buhari never endorsed any candidate ahead of the primary, repeatedly telling delegates only to choose someone capable of advancing the party’s ideals, even as Tinubu and other aspirants, including Yemi Osinbajo, Rotimi Amaechi, Ahmad Lawan, and Yahaya Bello, lobbied intensely for his support.
Tinubu went on to defeat that field at the convention, secured the APC ticket, and won the February 2023 presidential election before being sworn in on May 29, 2023, a path Lawal’s account suggests was shaped as much by backroom bargaining as by the public contest that played out before Nigerians.
