El-Rufai: Buhari was shocked when he heard Lawan was anointed presidential candidate

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna, says President Muhammadu Buhari was shocked when he was informed that Senate President Ahmad Lawan was the “anointed” presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Speaking on Thursday while responding to questions on a programme on TVC, el-Rufai said the president said he had no idea about the choice of Lawan.

In June 2022, hours before voting at the APC presidential primary was scheduled to start, Abdullahi Adamu, national chair of the party, had announced the senate president as the consensus candidate for the party.

“It’s just an information he gave us. All of us are entitled to our opinion. We are all democrats. This decision was never taken by the NWC, but an information given to the NWC,” Sulaiman Argungu, APC national organising secretary, had said at the time.

The announcement had been met with mixed reactions, including a rejection by several APC governors.

Speaking on Thursday, el-Rufai said Buhari was very clear about his position on the choice of a presidential candidate for the party.

“We heard that too. The members of the national working committee called us and said that the national chairman had told them that the senate president is the anointed one,” the Kaduna governor said.

“Again, the northern APC governors asked for a meeting with the president. We went to the president and said ‘Mr. President, this is what we are hearing; this is not what you’ve been telling us in the past two to three years. Is it true?’

“And the president expressed shock and said ‘I’m not part of this’. And right there and then, he summoned Garba Shehu to issue a statement that he has not anointed anyone. And he told us very clearly ‘I have not anointed anyone’.”