Mai Mala Buni, the governor of Yobe State has said that he would not be joining the coalition of opposition leaders led by Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President.
Mamman Mohammed, the Director-General of Press and Media Affairs, made this announcement in Damaturu on Saturday.
According to a widely circulated text message, Mr. Buni and four other APC governors had made plans to join Atiku’s alliance and defect to the opposition PDP before the general elections in 2027, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Mr. Mohammed characterised the widely shared message as including erroneous assumptions, unjustified imagination, and unfounded fabrications that had nothing to do with reality.
He said that the text’s author had never been close enough to the governor to suspect that he might try to forecast the governor’s political trajectory.
“Buni is no ordinary member of APC; he is not just an APC governor. He is APC in all ramifications, with APC flowing in his veins.
“His contributions to building APC as a two-term National Secretary and National Chairman who chaired the party’s convention committee makes him unique and whose imagination of leaving the party cannot be speculated,” he said.
The author and his paymasters must have been intrigued by Buni’s political acumen and wished they had someone like the governor, according to Mr. Mohammed. He said, “It must be wishful thinking.”
To take against the incumbent APC in the general election of 2027, Atiku and former Governor Nasir El-Rufai are leading the effort to build a coalition.
Following a conference in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, the governors chosen on the platform of the PDP, the party to which the former president belongs, recently said that they would not participate in any such political alliance.
Atiku responded the governors shortly afterwards, saying the coalition arrangements would go ahead despite the near unanimous opposition of his party’s governors.
