“I saw a president who was stubborn, almost visionary, but he ran Lagos for eight years. Whether he ran it well or not, I do not know. But he ran Lagos well. He resisted former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s overbearing and strong determination to get rid of him. Beyond that, I saw him as a calculating politician. He gave his platform to Atiku. He gave his platform to Nuhuru Ribadu. He participated actively. Then he agreed with Buhari, created a platform which allowed Buhari to become president. Because for 2003, 2007, 2011, Buhari was running, he did not get anywhere.”

He said Tinubu had played a major role in the election of former president Buhari.

“To be honest with you, I think that coalition, CPC-APC-AC, was decisive in terms of giving President Buhari victory. And as I said, I was part of the campaign. I had a front-line seat, so I know what I am talking about. And Tinubu’s contribution to Buhari’s emergence was genuinely a deciding factor. So in many ways, you have to give him credit for being a calculating president. I do not know what has happened since 2015, but I do not see the fire. I do not see that calculation. I did not see much of him, to be fair to him.”

He alleged that although selected a political adviser in the current administration, he was not pleased with the role, and had to resign. He reinstated his advice to Tinubu not to re-contest the position come 2027.

“To be honest, Vice President Kashim Shettima. But he had to get the consent of the president before I became an adviser. I mean, the vice president facilitated my appointment, and the president approved it. So, I would say President Tinubu approved my appointment. Otherwise, I would never have been an adviser.

“No, I did not do any job. I was supposed to be an adviser on political matters to the president, in the office of the vice president. You have to understand, at least in constitutional terms, it is the same thing. Basically, it is supposed to be both the vice president and I, we are both supposed to advise the president.

“There are two. There is one called Darazu. So there are two special advisers on political matters. Well, I have not met the first one either.

“I spent a year and six months there.

“To be honest, I suspect if I met the president, if I did sit down with him, I might say things to him that he might not be very happy about. I think they developed cold feet. Because if I did, I would have told him exactly what I said in that open letter: ‘Mr President, please do not run again.’

“It is not authority. I am making a request. I am not giving him instructions. I remember I said, I would have said: ‘Mr President, please do not run again.”

“And look, working for a government, especially Tinubu’s government that had inherited a really messed up country from Buhari, was the most patriotic thing anybody could do. You could not just turn your back on an administration that says: ‘come and help fix the country after the damage that you so graphically criticised’. I was one of the most vocal critics of former President Buhari. So, if a government takes over from President Buhari and says: ‘come and help fix the country,’ you could not possibly say: ‘no, I prefer to be a critic for life’. I participated very actively in Buhari’s election.

“I was chairman of his party for four years in my state, long before he became president, so I was not a critic. I became an outspoken critic: one, because my organisation had seen the situation in which the country was. A few months into the presidency of President Buhari, we could see that he was just interested in becoming president, and he was not interested in governing. Certainly, not governing well, and we started criticising him. We began by advising him privately. Then we started saying he was wrong here and he was wrong there. And then, when it became clear that he was not interested in public opinion, we became outstanding critics.

On why he advised the president not to run again in 2027, Baba-Ahmed said, “I think that first he has become a president, so that’s settled. A lot of the people who are now, including President Tinubu, quite possibly, want to be president just simply because they want to be president. We had the case of Buhari, perhaps even Atiku, whose multiple attempts at becoming president may be primarily driven by the desire to be president. If he spends the next two years of his life on the things that he ought to have done that he has not done yet or improving on what he has done.

“And then, like I said in my letter, look for a younger person, more energetic, healthier, more focused, more committed to the future of this country; find even from your party, find someone that a group of people among younger people, the kind of people who really feel the pain about what Nigeria is today. The kind of people whose children are just growing up, and they can look at them and say: ‘What will happen to my child or my grandchild in the next 20 years?’ The way this country is going downhill, consistently going downhill. There are a lot of educated, very athletic Nigerians who desperately want to be part of the future of this country. Trust them with power. You have done your bit. And so you do not need to run for another one. Spend the next two years fixing Nigeria, fix the economy as much as possible, fix insecurity.”

Baba-Ahmed argued that he had yet to see evidence that if Tinubu is voted for in 2027, the Nigerian economy would be better than it currently is.

“Well, it is not so much that he does not have the capacity. I do not know what will happen in the future. I have not seen evidence that the last two years have prepared him to continue to govern for six years, but more importantly, he does not need to be president to actually do something good for this country.

“If he draws the line at 2027 and prepares his party and the country to vote in a new set of people everywhere APC governor stands now, use your power and influence, get them to bring out younger people, a lot of people with energy, commitment, passion to fix what is broken, which is this country, history will record you as the greatest leader.”

He argued that who would end up as the next president has nothing to do with tribe.

“Let him come from anywhere. Believe me, at this stage, it is not important anymore. He could come from anywhere at this stage. Anybody who is talking to you about North and South doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

He reiterated his stand that Tinubu should not run for the presidency come 2027.

“I never really participated much in choosing who should vote. But for the benefit of hindsight, do you think he was better than the lot that were on the ballot in 2023?

“Again, to be honest with you, I participated with Northern groups in assessing these candidates. You remember there was a time when Northern groups got together. About five or six people turned up and we asked them questions. Beyond the moment parties choose who they wanted, as far as I was concerned, my job was done. In fact, everybody’s job was done. You had to leave the whole thing to the voter. Voters decided it was Tinubu. As far as I was concerned, that is a decision made democratically. If anybody disputed it, they could go to court. I had no problems with him being legitimately elected as president. I wanted him to succeed. I want him to succeed.”

He also said he would not return to work for Tinubu’s re-election even if invited.

“He won’t. No, I won’t go back. I can’t. Come on. Not for anything. Not for anything. I have done my bit. It did not work out. I have to move on.

“It can not be in the interest of the nation if I am just going in and out. I will be like some of these politicians jumping from one party in the morning and then the next evening, they have another party. They are talking about coalitions. I want to be better than those guys.”

Asked if he regretted backing the emergence of Buhari as president, he said, “Absolutely.

But Buhari represented the North.

“If you are talking about how he became president, that is a different thing. We did not support Buhari because he was a Northerner. We supported Buhari because he was a better option than Jonathan in 2015. He was a much better option at the time. And we supported him because we could quite clearly see that Jonathan’s administration was weak. It was soft on Boko Haram. It was soft on corruption.

“It was soft on a lot of things that we believed a government that had inherited from Yar’Adua ought to have been doing. We needed a president who would hold the country together, and we saw in Bahari a better option. And we supported him, not because he was a Northerner, but because we thought he was tough on corruption. He had fought Chadians who had invaded Nigeria many years ago. He had run a country that jailed corrupt politicians for 300 years and stuff like that. We supported him, and it could have been anybody. We were just looking for a better option than Jonathan.

On Buhari’s administration he said “I have not seen eight years under a leadership that just did not govern, did not care about the priorities, did not set priorities, did not chase, did not care about how the poor lived, how secure the country was, how the young people needed to find futures. I did not see one. Therefore, I could not see myself sitting on the fence when another government that had the mandate of Nigerians to fix Buhari’s damage says, ‘please come in and help.’ It would have been irresponsible to say no.”

“With the way the Tinubu government is going, no. But regretting going in, I do not. I got out because there was no space. I did not see that fire, commitment and zeal to fix a country that has been wrecked. Instead, I saw a country getting worse.

“See the records. The one I saw was where, in 2023, Nigerians lined up, elected President Tinubu, because they thought, okay, Buhari is gone, we are in a mess, let us elect a president that would fix Nigeria. President Tinubu comes in and says, ‘Put your belts on, we are going into some turbulence’. Thus removed subsidy, and you would think a president at that stage was quite prepared to undertake such a monumental policy. It turned out he did not. He had a handful of advisers who then had to fix a problem. They started looking for solutions.

“From day one, he pushed the country to the deep end. And we have never really recovered in a way. We keep seeing promises. And the difference between what President Tinubu’s people say the country is, and the difference between that and what the country is today, is miles apart. And you have to wonder whether we are living in the same Nigeria. I think that the issue is: should one have committed to working for a government that had at least the mandate of the people to fix things, particularly in the Northern part of the country? It is unbelievable the levels of insecurity and poverty.”