Don't blame me, says Buhari - source: 234 next news

General Buhari noted that with only a few days to the election, it was foolhardy to change his party’s vice presidential candidate

  The insistence of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to produce the vice president was responsible for the failure of the party's planned alliance with the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the party's presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, has said.

Mr. Buhari noted that with only a few days to the election, it was foolhardy to change his party's vice presidential candidate.
"By the electoral laws, this was virtually impossible before this election. We suggested that they should let us jointly go into the elections and jointly form the government after our victory. But our friends were not ready to take us on our honour and went to the media," he said.
In a statement signed by Mr. Buhari's spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, the former head of state said the notion that he was responsible for the inability of his party and the ACN to forge an alliance ahead of Saturday's polls was "baseless and unfounded."
He said he was responding to set the record straight and regretted the inability of the parties to harness what he called their electoral fortunes.
Not exactly
The ACN, on the other hand, continues to blame Mr. Buhari for the missed opportunity. A source at the meeting said the CPC vice presidential candidate, Tunde Bakare, had behaved in a manner that suggested that he had no intention to honour the accord.
"We are aware of the electoral act. We did not say they should change their ticket now, but after the election," says an ACN senior official.
NEXT learnt that although Mr. Bakare agreed to resign after the election, and even to write the resignation letter, he chose to address such a letter in a manner that gives him wiggle room.
"It was not a resignation as vice president but a letter addressed to the chairman of the board of trustees of his party offering to resign anytime Buhari is no longer happy with him, which left the room open, as the ACN guys saw it, for not resigning at all," said the source.
‘Nigeria is my client'
People have wondered why, in selecting an ACN candidate to be Mr. Buhari's vice president, Bola Tinubu did not deemed it fit to name his party's vice presidential candidate, Fola Adeola.
Instead, Mr. Tinubu named three others: Yemi Osinbajo, a former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Mr. Tinubu's administration; Yemi Cardoso, who was Mr. Tinubu's budget commissioner; and a former Lagos State finance commissioner, Wale Edun.
However, Mr. Adeola told NEXT yesterday that he was not particularly bothered by all that.
"My selection was to run with Nuhu Ribadu, so once we were going to go with Buhari, it is only right, the party has the right, to look at what was best," Mr. Adeola said.
The ACN vice presidential candidate also praised Mr. Ribadu's selflessness and patriotism.
"The only client I have in this whole thing is Nigeria. I am proud of the party on whose platform I am running. I am proud of the man I am running with, for his magnanimity and his generosity in agreeing to drop his own ambition and step down for another candidate. I am sorry that the other side decided to scuttle a good chance to win our country back by not agreeing to this simple request for a resignation letter," he said.