Mallam Garba Shehu, media aide to former President Muhammadu Buhari, has said there is no fallout between Buhari and President Bola Tinubu.
During an interview on Trust TV’s 30 Minutes, Shehu noted that public speculation about a rift between the two leaders is unfounded and not based on any actual disagreement or misunderstanding.
He made it clear that Buhari still stands firmly with the All Progressives Congress (APC), the political party that brought him to power after three failed attempts at the presidency.
“When people are entitled to hold their opinion, and your interpretation of it is purely your entitlement. I don’t think in a formal and official sense, anybody would talk about distrust or mistrust or a façade between the Buhari administration and the Tinubu administration,” Shehu said.
According to Shehu, Buhari has not forgotten the effort it took for the APC to form in 2014. He recalled how Buhari contested for the presidency three times without success until the APC was formed through a merger of several opposition parties.
“For Muhammadu Buhari, for him, he’s essentially an APC member. He does not forget the fact that he ran one, two, three times and failed to get the presidency until they cobbled together the APC,” he said.
“APC came together and gave him two terms, for which he has remained grateful, and says—and that’s what I’ve learned from him—‘I will never be ungrateful. I will never betray the party that gave me two terms in office,’” Shehu added.
He also addressed comments being made in public circles suggesting that Buhari and his allies are unhappy with the current leadership of the APC or with Tinubu’s administration. Shehu responded that such remarks do not worry them.
“We see statements; we read them when people say these things. Do we get disturbed? I don’t think that is the word,” he said.
Speaking further, Shehu noted that those who played a role in building the APC know how much effort it took and are unlikely to support anything that would divide or weaken the party now.
“It took a lot of doing, energy, and sacrifice for the APC to have been put in place, for the desperate opposition elements to come together,” he explained.
“They tried one, two, three times, and they failed. But by this time, they came together in 2014, formed a party, and ran in 2014. They won. Which means, in effect, that the people who were around, who saw how much sweat it took to build this coalition—I think they are not likely to be the ones who are trying to fracture it,” Shehu said.
