Speaking on the issue of zoning of the 2023 presidency in an interview with The Punch, Lawal said the national leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, was instrumental to President Muhammadu Buhari's victory in 2015 and should be given a chance in 2023.

Describing himself as a Tinubu man the same way he was a Buharist, Lawal noted that if Tinubu who he described as a colossus of south-west politics had not agreed on the merger between the then opposition parties, the merge would not have succeeded.

He recalled that when they went to the APC national convention, the north-west was not with Buhari but that he and the late Inuwa Abdulkadir continued to pile pressure on Tinubu, giving him the statistics, noting that it became clear that Buhari was going to win the primary election once Tinubu declared publicly his support for him and accepted that the south-west would vote for Buhari.

Lawal said Tinubu rallied funding for the campaign when President Buhari had no money to fund his election and brought in an agency from the United States that branded Buhari’s image, adding that Buhari won his presidential primary election without spending money.