National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has said he is not planning to replace Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo.
Tinubu said this in response to a report that he may be picked as the running mate of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
Buhari and Tinubu fell out shortly after the 2015 election but both men have been holding frequent meetings of late.
Tinubu was in the president’s delegation to the AU-EU summit in Cote d’Ivoire. During a meeting with Nigerians resident in that country, Buhari said the APC national leader gave him a “beautiful piece of information”.
Denying eyeing the job of Osinbajo, whom he nominated, Tinubu said: “the people of the south-west have absolute confidence and are exceedingly proud of the excellent job Prof. Osinbajo is doing as Vice President of Nigeria”.
“The attention of the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu Media Office has been drawn to the front page lead story of The SUN newspaper of yesterday, 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,” read a statement which Tunde Rahman, Tinubu’s spokesman, issued on his behalf.
It added that there is no logical basis for this mischievously speculative story debunking the claim that Osinbajo would consider returning to full church work rather than run with his boss for a second term.
Tinubu described the report as an attempt to distract the current administration from its “yeoman’s job” and instigate crisis in the APC.
He added that, “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.”
