Lauretta Onochie, former Special Assistant to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, has asserted that Nigeria’s current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, did not back Buhari’s emergence as the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate in 2014.
Buhari, who served as Nigeria’s president from 2015 to 2023, became the APC’s first presidential flagbearer following the party’s formation in 2013 through the merger of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).
Meanwhile, according to Tribune Online, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, on Wednesday declared that it was Buhari’s popularity — not Tinubu’s influence — that helped the APC defeat the then-ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015.
Speaking at the public presentation of According to The President: Lessons From A Presidential Spokesman Experience, a book authored by former presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu, Mustapha said, “The CPC had only one state then, but the important votes that gave us victory came from the CPC. We knew what we did to produce Buhari’s presidency.”
Reacting to Mustapha’s comment, Onochie shared the front page of the Nigerian Tribune with the headline: Buhari’s popularity won 12.5 million votes for APC in 2014, via her personal X account on Thursday. She praised Mustapha for exposing what she called the false narrative surrounding Buhari’s rise.
“Every lie has an expiry date,” Onochie wrote. “Yesterday, the lie that @officialABAT made @MBuhari President expired. Thank you, Boss Mustapha, for puncturing the lies of those unsuccessfully trying to rewrite history.”
She concluded: “Me: Tinubu DID NOT even support Buhari’s emergence as candidate in 2014. Fact.”
