Amid the furor over a single religion, joint ticket, and blocking a last-minute change of heart, the All Progressives Congress (APC) will, today, formally unveil its vice presidential candidate, Senator Kashim Shettima, to the public.
The party’s national organizing secretary, Sulaiman Muhammad Argungu, made this statement known, yesterday, on the party’s official WhatsApp platform available to journalists.
The unveiling will be witnessed by members of the National Executive Committee, Progressives Governors’ Forum, APC Caucus in the National Assembly, members of the Federal Executive Council, and APC state chairmen, among others, at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja.
The development put paid to speculations that the presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would decline Shettima in deference to agitations by Christians and other well-meaning Nigerians who rejected the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the party such as APC Muslim youths.
Speaking at a press conference, yesterday, in Abuja, the convener of the youth group, Abdullahi Saleh, said the Muslim-Muslim ticket was against the spirit of togetherness in the country.
Saleh said while it must be noted that there is a right to make decisions, such decisions must not be made to the collective disservice of the people that make up the country of Nigeria.
Also, the Christian Association Nigeria youth wing has said there is no way it will allow its members to vote for a Muslim-Muslim ticket. The chairman, of the North-central zone of the body, Owoyemi Alfred Olushola, who informed journalists in Abuja, yesterday, said Christian youths had settled never to support the idea.
In defense of the choice, the Tinubu Campaign Organisation (TCO), yesterday, rephrased that religion or ethnicity was far from the calculations of Tinubu in picking his running mate.
In a declaration by its Director of Media & Communication, Bayo Onanuga told if Tinubu planned to cash in on ethnicity, he would have picked a running mate from the Northwest, which has the highest number of registered voters.