Former House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Christians in the All Progressives Congress (APC) who reject their Muslim-Muslim ticket have been called impostors by the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council.
This was said in a statement released on Monday by Bayo Onanuga, the director of media and publicity for the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council.
APC officials from the North have warned that voting along religious lines in the general election of 2023 could have unfavorable effects on Nigerians and endanger the country’s progress.
The APC Northern Christian leaders led by Dogara and a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, agreed to focus on issues that unite them as a people rather than encouraging attacks on sensitive religious issues in the name of politics.
The resolutions were contained in a communiqué jointly signed by Dogara and a former deputy governor of Sokoto State and ex-Minister of Water Resources during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, Mukhari Shagari, after a consultative meeting held in Abuja on Saturday.
The meeting also had in attendance a former governor of Adamawa State, Boni Haruna; a former governor of Kwara State, Abdulfattah Ahmed; ex-Minister of Sports, Damishi Sango; Senator Idris Ahmed Umar; and two former deputy governors of Kogi State, Yomi Awoniyi and Simon Achuba.
But Onanuga on Monday accused Dogara of losing his mind when he realise his self-imposed ambition to be on the presidential ticket of All Progressives Congress was no longer guaranteed.
According to him, the former speaker has suddenly become a reprobate and demagogue, delivering hate speeches and whipping up emotions, with the aim of setting our country ablaze.
Onanuga said, “The Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council is therefore not surprised by media reports about a meeting of some so-called Northern Christian leaders, who claimed to be members of our All Progressives Congress that was championed by Dogara and his ilks.
“The claim was totally fraudulent. Yakubu Dogara, the peripatetic and politically unstable politician who organised the meeting left our party officially and unceremoniously weeks ago. And those who attended the meeting were representing themselves, their selfish agenda, not Northern Christians.
“Before then, the former speaker had spearheaded a campaign of vitriol and hate against our party, using religion as camouflage, after he lost the vice-presidential candidacy to a better qualified Senator Kashim Shettima.
“A careful reading of the people who attended the unholy meeting he called also showed that they were all PDP members, masquerading as APC members. We were not surprised by the resolutions adopted. Our surprise was that the media failed to read through their smokescreen.
“The APC PCC wondered how the assembly of strange bedfellows hoped to foster unity and cohesion in our country, when their candidate represents the antithesis of the goal, having emerged the greatest divider of our polity, between the north and south.
“All Nigerians are aware that Atiku’s emergence as the PDP presidential candidate grossly violated a power rotation code between the north and the south. His insistence on snatching and retaining what righly belongs to another political region has triggered a crisis within his party, making him run from Port Harcourt to London to mend fences.
“We want to assure Dogara and his co-travellers fanning hate campaign against our Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his running mate that they will fail spectacularly at the polls.
“From the engagements our leaders have had with men of all faiths, bigotry will not win next February election. What will prevail are the track records of our candidates and the solution-driven and all-inclusive progressive programmes the candidates offer Nigerians.”
