Tinubu campaigners support el-Rufai, minister defends Buhari

The federal government has rejected claims by Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai that some elements in the presidential villa are antagonizing All Progressives Congress presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

Information minister Lai Mohammed said the government was not “officially aware” of any entity in the presidential mansion opposing the APC flag bearer’s victory.

But the APC Presidential Campaign Council disagreed, saying it was not surprised by the governor’s revelation that some elements in the seat of power opposed Tinubu’s candidacy, adding that El-Rufai was merely taking the obvious recumbent stated.

The governor dropped the bombshell when he was a guest on Channels Television’s breakfast show, Sunrise Daily, on Wednesday.

It came a week after Tinubu cited the Central Bank of Nigeria’s naira redesign policies and the ongoing fuel crisis as part of plots to thwart the poll and his expected victory.

El-Rufai claimed that the forces working against the joint ticket of Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima were people whose preferred candidate lost the APC presidential ticket to the former governor of Lagos state last year.

He said: ‘I believe there are elements in the Villa who want us to lose the election because they didn’t get their way; they had their candidate. Their candidate did not win the primaries. They are trying to make us lose the election and they are hiding behind the president’s desire to do what he thinks is right.

“They are trying to make us lose the election, and they are hiding behind the president’s desire to do what he thinks is right. I will give two examples: this petroleum subsidy, which is costing the country trillions of Naira, was something that we all agreed should be scrapped.

“You have to understand the president. People blame the Central Bank governor for the currency redesign, but no. You have to go back and watch Buhari’s first appearance as president.

“He did this; the Buhari and Idiagbon regime changed our currency and did it secretly to catch those who stash illicit funds. It’s a very good idea. The president has his right. But to do it within the allotted time right now makes no political or economic sense.”

But addressing the allegation in a conversation with State House correspondents after the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council, the Information Minister argued that the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), did not favor or disapprove of any presidential candidate. ahead of the February 25 elections. .

“If there’s someone working against a candidate, we don’t officially know,” he said.

But when addressing journalists in Abuja, the PCC’s special adviser for media, communications and public affairs, Dele Alake, revealed that El-Rufai was not saying anything new.

He said, “There is nothing spectacular about what El Rufai has said. And it even speaks for itself. He said some people did, but he never said the president. In every organization, including your own individual media houses, you have an editorial policy and there are elements within your organization that disagree with those policies. Yet they still work there.

“So it’s not something spectacular. It’s just a natural phenomenon. In all organizations and institutions you cannot get 100 percent of the employees to look at problems in the same way.

“For Nasir El Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State, to state the obvious is nothing for us to clarify again. We know that troublemakers, especially from the opposition, will cling to it and take it out of context. That has always been the way of the opposition we face in Nigeria today.”