Uthman Ogunfolaji
Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has revealed that disagreements over the choice of a running mate scuttled an early alliance between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and former President Muhammadu Buhari ahead of the 2011 general election.
Mohammed disclosed this during an interview with political content creator, Edmund Obilo, explaining that negotiations between the political blocs of the two leaders broke down after they failed to agree on who would emerge as the vice-presidential candidate.
According to him, the camp of Buhari, which operated under the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change, had already settled for Pastor Tunde Bakare as Buhari’s running mate, a move that reportedly angered leaders of the Action Congress of Nigeria aligned with Tinubu.
Mohammed said the ACN leadership had argued strongly that it deserved the vice-presidential slot because of its wider political influence at the time.
“Now we in ACN argued powerfully that we controlled six states while CPC controlled only one state. We were even ready to contest under their platform, using their colours and everything,” he said.
He added that the ACN’s request was limited to producing the running mate, but the CPC leadership declined the proposal.
“We asked for just one thing, and they would not give it to us. Our people would have accused us of selling them out. On that point, we went our separate ways,” Mohammed stated.
The former minister noted that the failure of the talks eventually weakened the opposition ahead of the 2011 presidential election, leading to defeat for both political camps.
According to him, the experience later convinced both Tinubu and Buhari of the need to unite their political forces.
“By 2012, it became crystal clear to both Tinubu and Buhari that they needed one another,” he added.
The eventual reconciliation of opposition parties led to the formation of the All Progressives Congress in 2013 through a coalition involving the ACN, CPC, the All Nigeria Peoples Party and other political groups.
The merger later produced the historic opposition victory in the 2015 presidential election, when Buhari defeated the then incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, marking the first time an opposition party unseated a sitting president in Nigeria’s democratic history.
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