The national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has denied reports that he may be picked as the running mate of President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 general election.
The report indicated that Professor Yemi Osinbajo might be dropped as the vice president.
But in a statement by his media aide, Mr. Tunde Rahman, on Wednesday, Tinubu debunked the story saying he never had any such plan to take over the job of Osinbajo.
Tinubu said Osinbajo was doing a fantastic job and the people of the South West were proud of him.
The statement reads in part: “The attention of the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Media Office has been drawn to the front page lead story of The Sun newspaper of December 13, 2017, which sensationally and ridiculously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari may pick Asiwaju Tinubu as his running mate for the 2019 election. This is a classic case of utterly and irredeemably fake news.
“There is no empirical or logical basis for this mischievously speculative story. Is it even conceivable, as the story recklessly insinuates, that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo would be considering returning to full church work rather than run with his boss, President Buhari for a second term if the latter so decides without as much as discussing such a sensitive issue with his party and with Asiwaju Tinubu? In any case, is this story not entirely unwarranted and indefensible as the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket has an electoral mandate of four years out of which it has spent only over two years and a half years?”
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The statement reads further: “This is clearly an attempt to distract the APC federal government from the yeoman’s job it has been doing in rescuing the country from the deep-rooted socio-economic, political, security and moral mess inherited from the PDP’s 16 years misrule of Nigeria, instigate crisis within the party, stoke dangerous embers of religious disaffection within the party and the country generally and stem the remarkable progress being made in the reinvention and revitalization of Nigeria.
“There is greater sanity, accountability and transparency in the management of the country’s finances. The Boko Haram insurgency has been substantially contained. We should not allow ourselves to be derailed from the job we are effectively undertaking in fulfilling our campaign promises anchored on the tripod of containing insecurity, taming the scourge of corruption and resuscitating the economy.
“The Buhari and Osinbajo-led Federal Government is deftly steering the country out of an economic recession that was the result of the ineptness of the PDP years of the locusts. Asiwaju Tinubu will never support any attempt to distract Buhari and Osinbajo from the job they are passionately doing through the kind of false report.
“In particular, this story does great injustice to Vice President Osinbajo. Here is a man of the highest integrity, moral rectitude, amazing humility, high intellect and unimpeachable credibility.
“Here is a man of fierce loyalty and absolute trustworthiness who will never do anything in word, thought or deed to undermine his boss. His unquestionable dependability and indisputable fidelity to his oath of office was demonstrated beyond question by his honourable conduct during the President’s medical vacation.”
