First lady Aisha Buhari has amplified Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s claim that President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabal is plotting the failure of the APC presidential candidate Bola Tinubu in the February 25 election.

Mr El-Rufai, in an interview with Channels TV Wednesday morning, accused the cabal of working to sabotage Mr Tinubu’s presidential ambition.

“I believe there are elements in the Villa that want us to lose the election because they didn’t get their way. They had their candidate. Their candidate did not win the primary election. They are still trying to get us (to) lose the elections. They are hiding behind the president’s desire to do what is right,” said Mr El-Rufai, an APC chieftain and Tinubu ally. 

Hours after Mr El-Rufai’s claim, Mrs Buhari, grand patron of the Tinubu/Shettima women campaign group, took to her Instagram to share a video of Mr El-Rufai’s statement, amplifying the anti-Tinubu cabal claim.

Since her husband’s regime assumed power in 2015, the first lady has publicly criticised the president and the ruling APC. 

In a cryptic message in 2017, when Mr Buhari was sick and spent three months in a London hospital for an undisclosed ailment, Mrs Buhari described the cabal in her husband’s regime as “hyenas and jackals.”

In October 2022, Mrs Buhari apologised to Nigerians for Mr Buhari’s misdeeds as the president of Africa’s most populous black nation.