Fresh facts have emerged on why the late President Muhammadu Buhari had no favoured candidate for the last presidential election won by the incumbent president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Former Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Alhaji Yusuf Magaji Bichi, offered a startling revelation in a vivid account attributed to him in a book, From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari, written by Dr Charles Omole and unveiled on Monday.

The former DG, DSS justified why the late President Buhari refused to openly endorse any of the contenders for the APC presidential ticket as his successor in the uncertain days of the presidential convention won by the incumbent president, Bola Tinubu.

The former Rivers State governor and Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, emerged as Tinubu’s closest rival.

Further investigation revealed that former Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, was touted as Buhari’s anointed candidate.

The former APC national chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu’s move to proclaim the former Senate President as Buhari’s anointed candidate polarised the APC National Working Committee and led to a faceoff between him and the APC governors who had queued behind Tinubu.

Bichi, in his account in the book, revealed that Buhari refused to openly identify with any of the contenders for the APC presidential ticket, as such an open endorsement could have exposed a favoured candidate to grave danger.

He said:

“In those months, knives were out; politically and, as security professionals know too well, sometimes literally. To name an anointed heir would be to paint a target on a human being and to foreclose a process that, for all its imperfections, was designed to distribute risk.

“Buhari chose silence, and in doing so, absorbed the criticism that he was aloof. He was not. He was shielding a life and preserving a fragile equilibrium inside a party whose factions could as easily burn down the house as surrender the nomination they coveted.” (TRIBUNE)

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