THE controversy over whether late President Muhammadu Buhari truly supported Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Yemi Osinbajo or then Senate President Ahmad Lawan in the run-up to the 2023 presidential election has resurfaced, following conflicting accounts by former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, and Laolu Akande, former spokesperson to Osinbajo.
In this Sunday Political features, News Point Nigeria dissects and analyses the situation, examining the competing narratives, the political relationships that shaped the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential succession battle, and the questions that remain about Buhari’s private preferences, public posture and eventual role in the emergence of Tinubu as the party’s presidential candidate.
At the heart of the controversy is a fundamental question: did Buhari genuinely favour Tinubu over his former vice-president, Osinbajo, or did he deliberately avoid declaring a preferred successor to allow the party’s delegates to make the decision? And where does Ahmad Lawan, who was also among the leading contenders, fit into the competing accounts of what happened behind the scenes?
The debate is not merely about who Buhari wanted to succeed him. It is also about loyalty, political obligation, personal relationships, religious considerations, the management of presidential power and the credibility of accounts offered years after the events they describe.
The latest exchange has brought two sharply different interpretations of Buhari’s relationship with Osinbajo and Tinubu into public discussion. Lawal has portrayed the late president as a man whose sense of loyalty and personal morality made it difficult for him to support Osinbajo against Tinubu. Akande, however, has rejected that account, insisting that Buhari personally encouraged Osinbajo’s presidential ambition and publicly praised the manner in which he conducted his campaign.
Both accounts purport to shed light on events within the Presidential Villa before the 2022 APC presidential primary. Yet they differ substantially on what Buhari thought, what he said privately, and how he treated the ambitions of the two men who occupied central positions in his administration and party.
In July, Babachir Lawal, who served as Secretary to the Government of the Federation between 2015 and 2017, offered an account of how Buhari approached the APC presidential succession contest. According to him, the former president initially hesitated to support Tinubu because of what Lawal described as religious and ethical concerns.
Speaking in an interview with Symfoni TV, Lawal said Buhari was reluctant to back the former Lagos State governor as his preferred successor. He explained that, after extensive discussions with the president, he urged him to remain neutral and allow APC delegates to determine the party’s presidential candidate at the national convention.
Lawal’s account suggested that the challenge was not simply whether Tinubu had the political strength to win the ticket, but whether Buhari was comfortable handing over power to a man whose relationship with the president had its own history and complications.
According to the former SGF, Buhari acknowledged Tinubu’s contributions to the APC, particularly his role in earlier election campaigns, during which he provided political resources, strategists and personnel who helped shape the party’s electoral efforts.
Lawal argued that these contributions made it difficult for Buhari to outrightly oppose Tinubu’s presidential ambition, even if the president had reservations about him.
“Bola Tinubu brought people and we coarced him to change the trajectory of the campaign through those his people,” Lawal said.
He described Buhari as a decent man and claimed he was among the few people willing to confront the former president directly about the political realities surrounding Tinubu.
“Buhari is a human and he’s a decent guy. So I am the only person that confront him with these facts. He will not say I don’t know. He would not say it’s a rumour because I was there. So why would he deny him (Tinubu)? Why would he… in the end he said okay,” he recounted.
Lawal said he approached Buhari before the APC convention and proposed what he described as a deal: the president would refrain from publicly endorsing any aspirant, while the party’s delegates would be allowed to choose their candidate without presidential interference.
“As we were going to the convention, I said, ‘Oga’, let’s make a deal. I said look, this man (Tinubu), we now know that on the basis of your religion and your ethics and your upbringing, you don’t want to hand over to this man, but he has helped us get here.
“So there’s no way. Let’s make a deal. Stay neutral and allow me to run the process. If we go to the convention and the party faithfuls defeat him, so be it. Your hand is not in it,” Lawal said.
According to him, Buhari initially rejected the proposal because he believed Lawal would ensure Tinubu emerged as the party’s presidential candidate.
“But Buhari said that’s not an excuse. I know you, you will give Bola Tinubu this ticket. “I say, are you God now, sir?
“Buhari said, no, you started with me since 2002. So I know how you work. I know your methodologies. That man, if I leave him to you, he’ll get the ticket.”
Lawal said he responded by reminding Buhari that even if Tinubu won the party’s ticket, the Nigerian electorate would still decide the outcome of the general election.
“I say, okay, okay, granted. If he gets the ticket, it means you are now a prophet. However, you’re ascribing to me qualities I don’t have.
“But let’s assume it happens. Supposing the general election rejects him, is that you?”
The exchange, as narrated by Lawal, illustrates the alleged tension between Buhari’s reservations and the political reality of Tinubu’s influence within the APC. It also raises a question about the extent to which the former president could have influenced the outcome of the party’s primary had he openly backed a particular aspirant.
In a subsequent interview, Lawal offered a different but related explanation of Buhari’s position, claiming that the former president considered it “highly immoral and distasteful” for Osinbajo to contest against Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election.
Speaking again to Symfoni TV, Lawal said Buhari’s position was influenced by his longstanding relationship with Tinubu, whom he described as the person who recommended Buhari for the presidency and later sought to succeed him.
“I’m very close to Buhari; I know him very well. He’s somebody that believes in royalty. He’s somebody that does issues from the point of view of high morality,” Lawal said.
He argued that, regardless of what Buhari thought about Osinbajo’s capacity to lead Nigeria, the president would have found it difficult to support the former vice-president against Tinubu.
“Buhari would find it highly immoral for Osinbajo to contest the same position with Bola Tinubu,” he said.
“In his type of character, he will find it distasteful because he knew the relationship before; he is the man who recommended him for president, and Bola wants it.”
Lawal added that Buhari would have found Osinbajo’s decision distasteful even if he believed the former vice-president would make a better president.
“Even if he believes that Osinbajo will be a better president or whatever,” he said, Buhari would still have regarded the challenge to Tinubu as inappropriate.
This claim introduces another dimension to the debate. Whereas Lawal’s earlier account focused on Buhari’s alleged religious and ethical reservations about Tinubu, his subsequent remarks placed greater emphasis on loyalty to Tinubu and the history of their political relationship.
The two explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they leave unresolved questions about the weight Buhari attached to each consideration and whether he ever settled on a preferred candidate before the primary.
Lawal’s account of Buhari’s reservations about Osinbajo also included allegations concerning the former vice-president’s proposed staff appointments.
Osinbajo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, served as acting president during Buhari’s medical trips abroad. During those periods, he took several decisions, including the dismissal of Lawal Daura, then Director-General of the Department of State Services, in August 2018.
Daura’s removal followed an incident in which DSS operatives laid siege to the National Assembly complex in Abuja, preventing lawmakers and other persons from accessing the legislative chambers.
Lawal recalled that Buhari was concerned about the composition of the staff Osinbajo wanted to appoint to his office, alleging that many of them belonged to the former vice-president’s church.
He said a memorandum seeking approval for Osinbajo’s initial staff was allegedly left unapproved for about three months because it had not been forwarded to Buhari.
According to Lawal, the memo contained approximately 28 names, most of whom the former president allegedly believed were Yoruba and members of Osinbajo’s church.
Lawal claimed the issue was being discussed within the Presidential Villa while Abba Kyari, Buhari’s then Chief of Staff, allegedly refused to forward the memo to the president.
He said he eventually obtained a photocopy of the document and took it directly to Buhari.
These allegations became an important part of the controversy because they went beyond the question of political loyalty and touched on whether religion and ethnicity influenced decisions about appointments within the presidency.
However, Akande, who served as Osinbajo’s spokesperson from 2015 to 2023, has strongly rejected this account, describing the alleged memo and the claims surrounding it as fabricated.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Laolu Akande challenged Lawal’s version of events, insisting that Buhari had personally encouraged Osinbajo’s presidential ambition on several occasions.
Akande said he was privy to decisions taken within the Presidential Villa, particularly those involving the relationship between Buhari and his former vice-president.
“On the claim that President Buhari considered Osinbajo’s 2022 aspiration ‘immoral’, this is false,” Akande said.
According to him, Buhari had, on at least four separate occasions, personally offered to support Osinbajo and asked him a question that, in Akande’s view, contradicted Lawal’s account.
“On at least four separate occasions, President Buhari personally offered to support the Vice-President, telling him plainly: ‘If I don’t support you, who will I support?’” he said.
Akande also maintained that Buhari publicly commended Osinbajo’s campaign during the APC presidential primaries in 2022.
Read also: Buhari Would Find It ‘Distasteful’ For Osinbajo To Challenge Tinubu, Babachir Lawal Reveals
He said the former president praised Osinbajo at a Federal Executive Council meeting for conducting an issues-based and dignified campaign across the country.
“Buhari openly commended Osinbajo at a Federal Executive Council meeting for the dignified, issues-based manner in which he was conducting his campaign across the country,” Akande said.
He argued that such public praise was inconsistent with the claim that Buhari considered Osinbajo’s ambition immoral or distasteful.
“That is not a President who found Osinbajo’s ambition distasteful. That is a President who broached it, encouraged and applauded it,” Akande said.
Akande’s position is that Buhari’s conduct towards Osinbajo showed encouragement rather than opposition. Lawal’s account, on the other hand, presents the former president as a leader whose loyalty to Tinubu complicated his willingness to support Osinbajo.
The discrepancy is central to the dispute, particularly because both men are presenting their accounts as people familiar with the former president and the workings of his administration.
Akande also rejected Lawal’s claim that Osinbajo prepared a memorandum containing more than 20 staff names that was allegedly withheld by Kyari before Lawal took it directly to Buhari.
“Mr. Lawal’s claim that Osinbajo wrote a memo containing over 20 staff names, which was sat on by the President’s Chief of Staff, and which he, Mr. Lawal, then took to President Buhari, is a complete fabrication. There was no such memo,” Akande said.
He also disputed Lawal’s claim that Buhari allegedly referred to the proposed staff members in ethnic terms.
“Anyone who knew President Buhari knows he does not engage in the kind of snide ethnic profiling Mr. Lawal attributed to him — ‘BD, these are all Yorubas.’ That language and that conduct are alien to President Buhari,” Akande said.
According to Akande, Osinbajo had direct access to Buhari and regularly submitted memoranda to the president for approval before passing them to Ade Ipaye, his chief of staff, for onward communication to the relevant agencies.
“At no stage did this require the SGF, except for the subsequent issuance of appointment letters for staff,” he said.
Akande further challenged Lawal’s timeline, arguing that the claim of a three-month delay did not tally with the period when the staff appointments were made.
“Mr. Lawal’s timeline also collapses. He claimed the memo was delayed for three months. I resumed in the Office of the Vice President in June 2015, alongside several other colleagues. So did many of those whose names he now invents. There was no three-month delay,” he said.
“To those of us who were there, this story is pure fiction.”
Akande acknowledged that Osinbajo submitted various memoranda to Buhari at different times, but denied that there was a single list that was both unusually large and driven by religious or ethnic considerations.
He said there was never “a single, bloated, religiously and ethnically-charged list”, describing Lawal’s account as incredible.
Akande also pointed out that Buhari had removed Lawal from office before several of the appointments in question were made.
“It is also noteworthy that by the time a good number of the appointments were made, Mr. Lawal had been sacked by President Buhari (not Osinbajo) for corrupt practices,” he said.
Lawal’s removal as SGF in 2017 followed allegations of corruption, which he denied. Akande’s reference to the episode introduces the former SGF’s own history with the Buhari administration into the present disagreement, although it does not, by itself, establish whether his account of the alleged memo is accurate.
The competing accounts leave the public with two sharply different pictures of the same administration: one in which Buhari allegedly viewed Osinbajo’s ambition and appointments with suspicion, and another in which the former president encouraged his vice-president and presided over an office whose composition reflected religious and regional diversity.
The controversy must also be understood against the background of the APC’s 2022 presidential primary, which attracted several high-profile contenders.
Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, eventually defeated Osinbajo, former Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi, Senate President Ahmad Lawan and former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello to secure the party’s presidential ticket.
His emergence followed intense lobbying and political negotiations within the ruling party, with the question of Buhari’s preferred successor remaining a subject of public speculation.
Lawal’s account suggests that the former president ultimately agreed to let delegates decide the contest, rather than openly endorse an aspirant. Yet his later claim that Buhari would have considered Osinbajo’s challenge to Tinubu immoral raises questions about whether the president’s alleged neutrality was as straightforward as it appeared.
Akande’s rebuttal, meanwhile, insists that Buhari encouraged Osinbajo and praised his campaign, presenting a picture of a president who was willing to allow his vice-president to pursue the highest office.
Tinubu went on to win the February 2023 presidential election and was sworn in on May 29, 2023.
But the fact that Tinubu eventually won both the party’s ticket and the general election does not, on its own, settle the question of Buhari’s private preference or establish which of the competing accounts is accurate.
The place of Ahmad Lawan in this debate is also significant. He was among the leading contenders at the APC primary, but the latest dispute has largely focused on the relationship between Tinubu, Osinbajo and Buhari. The available accounts presented here do not establish that Buhari preferred Lawan over either of the two other aspirants.
Perhaps the most revealing public statement in the debate came before the APC primary, when Buhari was asked directly about his preferred successor.
In January 2022, during an exclusive interview with Channels Television, the former president declined to disclose the identity of his preferred candidate for the 2023 election.
Asked who he wanted to succeed him, Buhari replied: “It is a secret.”
He explained that revealing the person’s identity could put the candidate at risk.
“No, I wouldn’t say because he may be eliminated if I mention him. I better keep it,” he said.
When asked whether he was interested in who eventually succeeded him, Buhari responded: “No. Let him come, whoever it is.”
The remarks remain open to interpretation. They could be read as an attempt to protect a preferred candidate, as Buhari himself suggested, or as a deliberate refusal to publicly commit to any aspirant before the party made its choice.
They do not identify Tinubu, Osinbajo or Lawan as the person Buhari had in mind. Nor do they resolve whether he subsequently changed his position or privately expressed different preferences to different political associates.
What they establish is that Buhari publicly withheld the name of his preferred successor while the contest was still unfolding.
Beyond the disagreement between Lawal and Akande lies a broader question about how political decisions are remembered and explained after those involved have left office or, in Buhari’s case, passed away.
Lawal presents Buhari as a man guided by loyalty and personal morality, arguing that his relationship with Tinubu made it difficult for him to support Osinbajo against the former Lagos governor. His account also raises allegations about religious and ethnic considerations in the management of the vice-president’s office.
Akande rejects that interpretation, maintaining that Buhari encouraged Osinbajo’s ambition, publicly praised his campaign and did not engage in the ethnic profiling attributed to him. He also disputes the existence and timeline of the alleged staffing memorandum.
The disagreement is therefore not simply about whether Buhari liked one candidate more than another. It concerns the credibility of accounts of private conversations, the interpretation of public actions and the political relationships that shaped the succession process.
It also highlights the limits of retrospective testimony. Both men claim familiarity with the administration, but the accounts differ, and the information presented does not independently settle the disputed private conversations or establish the existence of the alleged memo.
A careful assessment must distinguish between what Buhari said publicly, what Lawal says happened privately, and what Akande says he witnessed or knew from his own role in the vice-president’s office.
The distinction matters because political narratives can become more definitive with time, even when the underlying evidence remains contested.
For now, the central question remains unanswered: did Buhari privately prefer Tinubu, encourage Osinbajo, or keep his real choice undisclosed until the party settled the contest?
Read also: ‘You’re Working For Tinubu’, ADC Blasts Kwankwaso Over Call For Atiku To Step Down
His public remarks indicate that he was unwilling to reveal his preferred candidate in January 2022. Tinubu’s eventual victory establishes who emerged from the APC primary and won the presidency, but it does not prove which aspirant Buhari privately favoured throughout the process.
Until the conflicting accounts can be reconciled with reliable evidence, the controversy over Buhari’s preferred successor remains an unresolved chapter in the political history of the 2023 election.
