The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Tomitope Ajayi, has stirred political debate by asserting that former President Muhammadu Buhari would not have secured the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential ticket in 2014 without the critical support of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Ajayi’s comments were made in direct response to remarks by former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, during a book launch held in Abuja for Working with Buhari, authored by former presidential spokesman Mallam Garba Shehu.
At the event, Mustapha had stated that Buhari’s rise to power was not due to the efforts of any single individual. He noted that Buhari already had a steadfast political base of 12.5 million votes before the 2015 general elections, and that the additional three million votes from the legacy parties that formed the APC were sufficient to secure victory over then-President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
However, Ajayi, taking to his official X (formerly Twitter) handle @TheTope_Ajayi, dismissed Mustapha’s analysis as a distortion of political reality.
He insisted that Buhari’s road to the presidency began with winning the APC primary—something he argues would have been impossible without the backing of Bola Tinubu.
“Let’s even leave the general election that then-General Buhari won to become president in 2015. There is no way he would have won the election to be president without first becoming the presidential candidate of his party, APC,” Ajayi wrote.
He went on to stress that Tinubu played a decisive role in uniting the South West delegates and rallying key APC governors to back Buhari during the party’s national convention at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos in 2014.
Ajayi further noted that Buhari’s prior three attempts at the presidency, in 2003, 2007, and 2011, failed his northern support base.
“Buhari had his 12 million captive Northern votes, yet he lost three presidential elections… Every effort and support that made it possible for President Buhari to win should never be diminished,” he stated.
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