TINUBU: JONATHAN PLOTTING TO BLOCK ME FROM EMERGING BUHARI'S RUNNING MATE.

A national leader of the All Progressives Congress [APC], Bola Tinubu, has accused President Goodluck Jonathan of mounting a campaign to block him from picking the vice presidential ticket of the party.
He said the president and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP], were afraid that the combination of a former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, and himself as the APC presidential and vice presidential candidates, could wreck them in the February 14 election.
He was responding to an article published in a popular online medium, Sahara Reporterstitled, “How Jonathan Blackmailed Bola Tinubu before 2011 Presidential Election: Season of Wrong knives.”
The former Lagos governor is accusing the President of being behind the report even though Sahara Reporters is not known to be a fan or mouth piece of Mr. Jonathan.
Mr. Tinubu, is angling to run on the same ticket in the presidential election with Mr. Buhari, who was elected the APC candidate last Thursday.
However, it is believed that some of the party’s leaders are not comfortable with the combination because both are Muslims.
The statement by the Tinubu Media Office, on Tuesday, said the unfolding “smear campaign” against the former governor did not come as a surprise.
It said the campaign against Mr. Tinubu had been in the works for years since the Jonathan-led government realized that the APC leader commanded a powerful political followership.
“The successful merger and birth of the APC posed the most potent threat to the PDP and Tinubu, an architect of the merger, has become a marked man,” the statement said.
“The thought of a Buhari-Tinubu ticket confounds the PDP hierarchy and their crisis-battered president. That Tinubu might be nominated as General Buhari’s running mate also incenses the small element within the APC who joined the party not for its progressive vision but to exploit its platform to press forward their vision of themselves.
“Having failed at halting General Buhari’s bid, the PDP disinformation machine has thrown itself into overdrive trying to stymie the selection of Tinubu. Sadly, some elements within the APC – elevating their personal ambition over party and national interests — have lent themselves to this endeavour.”
The statement recalled that during the Nazi takeover of Germany, “madman” Adolf Hitler became jealous of those within his own party who showed independent thought and who would not allow themselves to be bent just so he could satisfy his megalomania.
Outraged by the situation, Mr. Hitler engineered a purge executing the lot of them., a bloody scheme that became known as the “night of the long knives.”
It said Nigerians had entered the “season of the wrong knives.”
Reeling out some of the allegations made in the campaign against Mr. Tinubu, the statement said the one on the academic qualification of the APC leader was not new.
“What is new is how desperate they have become to stir up a new controversy using an old lie,” it said.
“In the past these allegations were successfully rebutted. Recent attempt to present them as fresh allegations will not go unchallenged.”
It said the online report also claimed that Mr. Tinubu withdrew his support for the ACN in the 2011 election due to blackmail by the president.
It however noted that it was rather odd that the report coloured the former governor as the villain.
The statement argued, “If the report were true, he would be a victim. President Jonathan and his administration would be guilty of the high crime of extortion.
“This tiny consideration seemed not to dawn on the authors of this scurrilous piece; so fixated on stabbing Tinubu, they implicate their own boss in wrongdoing. So eager to please their master, Jonathan’s mindless men further ensnare him.
“If Tinubu had been scared off in 2011, it would make no sense for him to spearhead the formation of the APC against the same president.