…Zulum leads allies
From Abubakar Rabilu, Gombe
As President Bola Tinubu continues to receive endorsement for his re-election from All Progressives Congress, APC, on another front the crack is getting wider over the APC’s silence on the fate of Vice President Kashim Shettima in the 2027 presidential election.
Irked by the party’s perceived unwillingness to allow Shettima pair with Tinubu for re-election, Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, led a protest after the party’s leaders endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a re-election without including Vice President Kashim Shettima, at the North East stakeholders meeting in Gombe, yesterday.
The APC National Chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, and National Vice Chairman (North East), Comrade Mustapha Salihu, endorsed Tinubu for a second term without reference to Shettima.
This stirred anger among Shettima’s loyalists at the meeting, prompting security operatives to whisk away Ganduje and Salihu from the venue under heavy security while delegates demanded Shettima’s endorsement.
AljazirahNigeria reports that Ganduje had recently, at the party’s national summit in Abuja, announced Tinubu as the sole presidential candidate in 2027 and Abdullahi Ganduje and led some key party chieftains to the meeting.
The meeting which was attended by ministers, lawmakers, and governors of the party from the region may have opened another frontier battling the internal wrangling.
Salihu, like the party’s national chairman endorsed Tinubu to emerge as an unopposed candidate of the APC but was silent about Shettima thus prompting furry delegates with some threatening to attack him physically, but he had to be smuggled out of the meeting by security operatives.
In this vein, the meeting ended abruptly. While Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, in the protest, demand the endorsement of Vice President Kashim Shettima as Tinubu’s running mate as preparations for the 2027 presidential election gathers momentum, pundits believe that the prevailing of Tinubu’s endorsement most likely will continue to sweep through Nigeria’s political landscape particularly among the leadership of the ruling APC.
