Mr Buhari said before the deadly bomb blasts in 2015, Mr Kwankwaso told him that those who did not want him to return to power might make him a subject of attacks.
President Muhammadu Buhari has revealed how an armoured vehicle gifted to him by former Kano Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, helped him survive a deadly attack in Kaduna State.
In a documentary titled ‘Essential Muhammadu Buhari’, aired on Sunday, the president described an incident that almost took his life during the 2014 electioneering before winning the election in 2015.
Mr Buhari had narrowly escaped fatal bomb blasts that killed dozens in the Kawo area of Kaduna, using the armoured vehicle gifted to him by Mr Kwankwaso, a former Defence Minister and currently the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP).
Over 80 civilians were reported to have died in the twin bomb blasts that Mr Buhari, then a presidential aspirant of the All Progressive Congress (APC), survived on 23 July, 2014
Before the bomb blasts, Mr Buhari recalled, he had been admonished by Mr Kwankwaso that those who did not want him to get the power might make him a subject of brutal attacks. The president insinuated that he could have lost his life by now if he had not listened to Mr Kwankwaso.
“I think Kwankwaso was being generous; he gave me an armoured Land Rover vehicle,” the president narrated to Nigerians in the documentary. “He said I should use it because he believed the competition I was going into involved people who would like to eliminate me.”
He continued: “I was going to Kano from Kaduna in that jeep and a vehicle wanted to overtake us but my escort stopped them and they detonated the bomb.
When I looked, I saw pieces of human beings. None of us in the vehicle were injured. But somehow I saw blood on me because of the number of people killed outside by the bomb.”
In a statement after the incident, however, Mr Buhari declared that it was an assassination attempt and narrated how the suicide bomber tried to carry out the deadly assignment.
Mr Buhari contested and lost three presidential elections before finally becoming Nigeria’s president in 2015 following his victory in that year’s poll.
In the 50 minutes documentary about the life of the ruling president, his nephew, Mamman Daura, claimed that Mr Buhari was pressured to lead the Nigerian government but he resisted many times before he succumbed in 2002.
The former head of state will hand over power later this after the forthcoming general elections. He had pledged his support for the presidential candidate of his party, APC, Bola Tinubu.
