New facts have emerged as to why the late President Muhammadu Buhari did not have a favorite candidate for the last presidential election won by the incumbent President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Former Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Alhaji Yusuf Magaji Bichi, offered a startling revelation in a vivid account attributed to him in a book, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, written by Dr. Charles Omole and launched on Monday.
The former DSS Director-General justified why the late President Buhari refused to openly endorse any of the candidates for the APC presidential ticket as his successor in the uncertain days of the presidential convention won by the incumbent President, Bola Tinubu.
Former Rivers State Governor and Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, emerged as Tinubu’s closest rival.
Further investigation revealed that former Senate President Ahmad Lawan was touted as Buhari’s anointed candidate.
The decision of former APC National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, to proclaim the former Senate President as Buhari’s anointed candidate polarized the APC National Working Committee and sparked a clash between him and APC governors who had queued up behind Tinubu.
Bichi, in his account in the book, revealed that Buhari refused to openly identify himself with any of the contenders for the APC presidential candidacy as such an open endorsement could have exposed a favored candidate to grave danger.
He said: “In those months, knives were out of use; politically and, as security professionals know only too well, sometimes literally. To name an anointed heir would be to paint a target on a human being and shut down a process that, for all its imperfections, was designed to spread risk.
“Buhari opted for silence and, in doing so, absorbed criticism that he was aloof. He was not. He was protecting a life and preserving a fragile balance within a party whose factions could as easily burn down the house as deliver the nomination they coveted.”