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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.