Indications have emerged that governors elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, are insisting on a sitting colleague to be picked as vice presidential candidate to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the 2023 election, following the role they played in his emergence as the flagbearer.
According to reports, the governors are also pushing for Tinubu’s running mate to come from the North-East, particularly from Borno State, and that if on the other hand, it goes to the North-West, it should not be Katsina State.
They were said to have contended that since Katsina produced late President Umaru Yar’Adua and incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari, it shouldn’t be considered.
It was also learned that another group in the Progressives Governors camp is pushing for the North-West geo-political zone to produce the vice presidential candidate, while looking in the direction of Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State; Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, and Governor Atiku Abubakar of Kebbi State.
However, there is alittle problem as it has been said that Tinubu is said to be insisting on Senator Kashim Shettima, a former governor of Borno State.
According to sources, the sitting governors want the APC presidential candidate to compensate them for the role they played before the convention where they killed the move by National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, to have a consensus presidential candidate in person of the President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan, from Yobe State.
The stakeholders want the North-East, especially Borno State, to produce the vice president in 2023, against the backdrop of the fact that the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan from Yobe State, North-East, did not get the APC presidential ticket.
The opinion of the leaders from the North-East is that the North West produced late former President Umaru Yar’Adua from Katsina; incumbent President Buhari also from Katsina and former Vice President Namadi Sambo from Kaduna State.
A source said: “The APC governors are pushing that the presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, should pick his vice presidential candidate from among them because of the role they played to stop the action of the APC National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, who had already settled for the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, as the presidential candidate of the ruling party.
“There are strong feelings that though the governors want one of them, Tinubu wants Senator Kassim Shettima as his vice-presidential candidate.”
From the look of things, Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna and Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, despite the fact that they are strong supporters of Tinubu, are out of the scheming process as it appears that the race for the running mate may have been reduced to just two men.
They are the governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, and his predecessor, Kashim Shettima.
But the dilemma over the choice at the moment, it was gathered, is that while the governors prefer a sitting governor in person of Babagana Zulum of Borno State, Tinubu is said to have zeroed his search on former governor of Borno State, Senator Kashim Shettima, who currently represents Borno Central in the Senate.
A source claimed that Tinubu prefers Shettima because he had been in the forefront of his presidential struggle.
It was gathered that he wants to settle for Shettima because he is politically on ground, a formidable force and well-
accepted in the North-East in order to split the votes from the zone with former Vice President and the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, who hails from Adamawa State, also in the North-East.
From the permutation on the ground, if Tinubu settles for either Zulum or Shettima, it will be a Muslim-Muslim ticket and if this fails, the party may also look in the way of former speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, from Bauchi, North-East zone, who is a Christian or Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State, North-Central, also a Christian.
Recall that Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate, had submitted the name of Alhaji Kabiru Ibrahim Masari as his running mate for the 2023 presidential election.
Masari, who hails from Masari, a town in Kafur Local Government Area of Katsina State, served as the National Welfare Secretary of APC during Comrade Adams Oshiomhole’s tenure as national chairman of the party. The former Edo State governor chaired the APC from 2018 to 2020.
Tinubu’s running mate was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP during the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and after the death of Yar’Adua in 2010, Masari defected to the defunct Congress for Progressives Change, CPC, the party under which Buhari contested but lost the 2011 election.
Ahead of 2015, CPC collapsed its structure into APC and Masari joined the ruling party.
The APC presidential candidate must substitute the name of Masari with another running on or before the July 15 deadline set by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
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