President Bola Tinubu, on Thursday maintained his position that Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor rode on his back to office in 2015, a point he clearly made some three years ago in Abeokuta, Ogun State, with a graphic picture of events that led to the outcome.

Recall that at a rally in the city, to campaign for the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), ahead of its convention in 2022, Tinubu had told the story of how his political engineering led to Buhari’s presidency in his now famous emilokan speech.

He said: “If not for me talking to you today, Buhari would not have been President. It has been over 25 years since I have been serving them. 

“The one sitting behind me, Dapo Abiodun, could not have become the governor without me.

“Since the time we started with the Action Congress AC, Action Congress of Nigeria ACN and now, the All Progressives Congress APC, I have wanted to contest for President since those times.

“This is me telling you, between my life and God Almighty, Buhari called me to be his Vice-President. 

“He said because the first time he contested, he picked Okadigbo, flamboyant, Catholic, but Nigerians didn’t vote for him.

“The second time, he picked another Igbo, Ume Ezeoke, Nigerians didn’t vote for him; that if he goes to bring the Pope to run as his vice, Nigerians won’t vote for him, but you, Bola Tinubu, you have six governors, you have never lost an election before, come and be my vice.

“He knew all the calculations then favoured us, that was why he wanted me as his vice, but I told him to let us build the party first. 

“And when we finished building the party, after we brought in people from the PDP, Saraki now saw that those from the PDP will not get anything if Buhari, a Muslim, becomes the President and me, also a Muslim, becomes his vice, he won’t get the senate president and the senate president cannot also be a Muslim, that was how they started the campaign of calumny against me.”

Tinubu returned to the story again on Thursday against the alluding to the controversy raise by Boss Mustapha, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), whose comments on Wednesday, appeared to debunk the President’s claims, as he held that Tinubu’s contribution to the emergence of Buhari as President, was meagre.

At the launch of the book: According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience, written by Garba Shehu, who served Buhari for eight years as spokesman,  the former SGF, had recounted how the Tinubu and other camps in the APC contributed only a paltry 3.5million to 15 million votes that the former President scored to pick up the nation’s number job.

Acknowledging the effect of the merger of the political forces that came into play to create the outcome, he said: “President Buhari’s integrity, national stature and disciplined messaging were central to that breakthrough.

“Not only that, for us in the ACN, I do not intend to stir any controversy, but I will make bold to state this – that the merger in 2013 was midwifed to present a Buhari or create a Buhari Presidency because we looked at the statistics of the votes that were coming to the table. In the 2003 election, it was the Obasanjo/Buhari presidential contest where Buhari recorded 2.7 million votes. In the next election, he got 12.7 million votes. In 2007, it came to 6.6 million, it went back to 12.2 million in 2011.

“When we were conceptualising the merger, what would give us a head-start and obviously, it was at the back of our consciousness that the merger with the CPC, though it had only one state, the ACN had six states, ANPP three states, and when you sum up the total votes that gave us the presidency in 2015, the aggregate of the total votes was 15.4 million. So, basically, what we brought to the table after the merger outside the Buhari 12.5 million votes was three million.”

Regardless the graphic explanation, Tinubu, who conveyed his own position through Bayo Onanuga, his spokesman, maintained that without the merger there would not have been a Buhari Presidency, which ran from 2015 to 2023.

Onanuga, Special Adviser on Media and Strategy, who was a guest on Prime Time, a public affairs programme on ARISE NEWS Television network, though excused the former SGF, saying his comments were clearly misunderstood and being given different meaning, stressed that without those strategic votes, Buhari would have been nowhere despite the huge votes in question.

Hear him: “It was clear to ACN, a very strategic arm of that alliance, that without additional support, there was no way Buhari could have won the election.

“Yeah, he was getting 12 million votes if you put all the 19 states together, but in the south, Buhari was nowhere. Buhari needed the spread. ACN had six. Buhari got the votes he needed in those six states. 

“They may not be in millions, but there were important votes. He won in all those six states, and he got more than 25 percent. 

“At the end of the day, he won in about 25 states, more than the constitutional requirement of 24 states. 

“Buhari never forgot the help that Tinubu rendered to him. 

“He would not have become President without Tinubu’s assistance.”