APC Formally Unveils Shettima Today as Tinubu Campaign Group Justifies Choice of Ex-Borno Governor

Adedayo Akinwale

The All Progressives Congress (APC) will today unveil its Vice-Presidential Candidate, Senator Kashim Shettima, ahead of the 2023 elections.

This is as the Tinubu Campaign Organisation (TCO), which claimed to have followed the debate Muslim-Muslim ticket has generated, said the choice of the former Borno State governor was for collective good.

National Organising Secretary of the party, Sulaiman Argungu, who disclosed this in a tersestatement, yesterday, in Abuja, said the unveiling scheduled to take place at Shehu Musa Yar’dua Centre, would hold at 11 a.m.

According to the statement, “All members of the National Executive Committee (NEC), members of the Progressives Governors’ Forum, members of APC Caucus in the National Assembly, members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), members of the Diplomatic Corps, presidential aspirants at the June 2022 Special National Convention, APC State Chairmen, APC State Secretaries and APC State Organising Secretaries, are, hereby, invited to witness this landmark official unveiling of our great party’s Vice Presidential candidate.”

But the Director of Media & Communication, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, in a statement stressed that Nigerians have a lot to gain in having the two tested leaders at the helm of affairs, stating that religion or ethnicity was far from the calculations  of APC presidential candidate,  Bola Ahmed Tinubu in picking his running mate.

“If Asiwaju intended to cash in on ethnicity, he would have picked a running mate from the North Western part of Nigeria, which has the highest number of registered voters. If he wanted to appeal to the base instincts of religion, he would have also gone for a candidate in the Christian dominated parts of Nigeria.

“But there was no such consideration. Instead he picked a tested politician and technocrat from the minority Kanuri ethnic group from the North East,” he said.

Onanuga explained further that the factors at play were issues germane to confronting  the multi-dimensional crisis the nation faces today, including insecurity, economic problems, such as the unemployment crisis facing our youths.

His words: “Our candidate canvassed on his track record in Lagos to win the APC primary last June.  As governor between 1999 and 2007, he was able to transform a decadent state into the fourth biggest economy in Africa. He believes that his feat in Lagos can be replicated all over Nigeria.

“To assist him in realising this vision, he picked Kashim Shettima, who also established a track record of development in Borno State, while he was  governor for eight years, despite the Boko Haram crisis. Surely, only the deep knows how to call onto the deep.”