The Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, has disclosed that Senate President Bukola, Zamfara State Governor, Abdulaziz Yari and he fell out with National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu over their failure to support his vice presidential ambition in the 2015 presidential election.
Tambuwal made the disclosure in an interview with Vanguard last weekend.
According to him, Tinubu refused to support Saraki’s emergence as Senate President because Saraki opposed his vice presidential ambition.
Tambuwal added that contrary to belief that he fell out with Tinubu over House of Representatives politics, it was his failure to support the ex-Lagos governor’s vice presidential bid that caused a rift between them.
The Sokoto governor disclosed that the decision to oppose Tinubu’s ambition was because the APC would have had to field a risky Muslim-Muslim ticket as then presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari was also a Muslim.
He noted that because of Nigeria’s delicate ethnoreligious make-up, such a ticket would have been difficult to sell to voters.
Recalling a conversation he had with Tinubu, Tambuwal said:
I said to him: “You have spoken to an emir in the North for about 45 minutes that you want to take your pound of flesh because Bukola didn’t support you to become Vice-President and that he should not get Senate President.”
He said: ‘Ah, how did you get to know?’ I told him the emir told me; you don’t know how close I am to that emir.
So, I said: “Asiwaju; I know what the game is. We had insisted that Bola Tinubu should not be running mate to Buhari. Buhari had already caved in, and we said that with Muslim-Muslim ticket, we could not win and that was my first offence.
That was my first offence with Tinubu, not this House of Representatives politics. That was also the offence by Bukola, offence by Yari.
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