Laolu Akande, a former spokesman to ex-Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, has rejected Babachir Lawal’s claim that former President Muhammadu Buhari viewed Osinbajo’s 2023 presidential ambition as “highly immoral and distasteful,” saying Buhari personally offered to back the bid at least four times.
Akande, who spoke for Osinbajo from 2015 to 2023, made the rebuttal in a statement on Saturday. He said Lawal’s allegation was false and that Buhari had, on four separate occasions, asked Osinbajo: “If I don’t support you, who will I support?”
Osinbajo ran in the All Progressives Congress presidential primary in 2022 but lost to Bola Tinubu, who went on to win the 2023 presidential election.
Lawal, a chieftain of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (ADC) and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, had said in a recent interview that Buhari would have struggled to back Osinbajo because of his long relationship with Tinubu, a former Lagos State governor.
Akande said he watched the interview and chose to respond because he was present when decisions about the former vice-president’s office were made.
He recalled that during the 2022 primary campaigns, Buhari openly commended Osinbajo at a Federal Executive Council meeting for the dignified, issues-based manner in which he campaigned across the country. According to Akande, the President spoke in a laudatory tone and the entire Council witnessed it.
“That is not a President who found Osinbajo’s ambition distasteful. That is a President who broached it, encouraged and applauded it,” Akande said.
Osinbajo finished third in the June 2022 APC primary with 235 votes, behind Rotimi Amaechi, who scored 316, and Tinubu, who won with 1,271 votes.
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