If We Don’t Want Wrath Of God, Tinubu Must Be Allowed To Contest In 2023 – Babachir Lawal

A former secretary the government of the federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, said the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, must be given a strong backing to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari because he has done a lot for the ruling party.

Lawal stated this while speaking with Punch, where he described Tinubu as a man who “had his tentacles spread across the corporate world.”

According to him, the APC national leader was the arrowhead of the democratic revolution, adding that “except we want to bring the wrath of God on our heads,” the APC must give him a chance.

“First of all, I want to declare that I am a Tinubu man. There’s no denying that there’s a Tinubu factor in the APC. Just like I was a Buharist and every time Buhari’s name was mentioned, I stood by it. But the crisis that started in the APC has nothing to do with 2023. It just had to do with the mismanagement of the party by those entrusted with that responsibility – namely the NWC,” Lawal said.

“One of our specific goals was to make Buhari the president. Tinubu was a colossus of south-west politics. If he had said there would be no merger, there wouldn’t have been any merger.

“By the time we went to the APC national convention, the north-west was not with Buhari. The north-west people were either for Atiku or Rabiu Kwankwaso; most of them, at least. The late Inuwa Abdulkadir and I continued to pile pressure on Tinubu, giving him the statistics.

“It became very clear that Buhari was going to win that primary election once Tinubu declared publicly his support for him and accepted that the south-west would vote for Buhari. Between Wednesday and Thursday (before the convention), it was clear Tinubu and Bisi Akande were going to support Buhari and the north-west had no choice but to support Buhari, otherwise, they were going to lose out.

“So if Tinubu had not conceded at that point, I think probably Kwakwanso would have won the presidential nomination of the APC. For that reason alone, you can see Tinubu’s contributions to the emergence of Buhari as president and his role in building the party.

“Therefore, except we want to bring the wrath of God on our heads, which we don’t want, the party must create an environment that is free and fair for anybody who wants to contest, including Tinubu, to do so. Allow the delegates, who must have emerged through a similarly free and fair process, decide who they want to vote for. It will be our duty as ‘Tinubu’s boys’ that time to say, ‘Let us vote for Bola’.”

KanyiDaily recalls that Babachir Lawal had also revealed how Tinubu transformed Buhari’s image and packaged him for the 2015 presidential election.