Garba Shehu, the spokesperson for former President Muhammadu Buhari, has stated that there is no conflict between Buhari and President Bola Tinubu.
During an interview on Trust TV’s 30 Minutes, Shehu described the rumours of a strained relationship between both leaders as mere speculation without any official basis.
“When people are entitled to hold their own opinion, and your own interpretation of it is purely your own entitlement,” he said.
“I don’t think in a formal and official sense anybody would talk about distrust or mistrust or a façade between the Buhari administration and the Tinubu administration.”
Shehu explained that Buhari remains committed to the All Progressives Congress, the party that brought him to power after three failed presidential bids.
“For Muhammadu Buhari, for him, he’s essentially an APC member,” he said.
“He does not forget the fact that he ran one, two, three times and failed to get the presidency until they cobbled together the APC.
“APC came together and gave him two terms, for which he has remained grateful, and says—and that’s what I’ve learnt from him—‘I will never be ungrateful. I will never betray the party that gave me two terms in office.’”
Reacting to discussions about alleged internal tensions in the ruling party, Shehu said Buhari’s camp is unbothered by such claims.
“We see statements; we read them when people say these things. Do we get disturbed? I don’t think that is the word,” he said.
He also noted that those who were part of the process that formed the APC in 2014 are unlikely to take actions that would destabilise it now.
“It took a lot of doing, energy, and sacrifice for the APC to have been put in place, for the desperate opposition elements to come together,” he said.
“They tried one, two, three times, and they failed. But by this time, they came together in 2014, formed a party, and ran in 2014. They won.
“Which means, in effect, that the people who were around, who saw how much sweat it took to build this coalition—I think they are not likely to be the ones who are trying to fracture it.”