Tinubu and Shettima candidacy for the 2023 General Election
Tinubu/Shettima: ‘Boko Haram, ISWAP have hijacked APC to declare full Islamic State in Nigeria’ – HURIWA
Rights group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has claimed that terrorists of the Boko Haram and Islamic State for West Africa Province (ISWAP) have actively hijacked the ruling All Progressives Congress with plans to fully Islamise Nigeria.
This is also as the group further called on Nigerians to reject the APC at the 2023 Presidential poll.
HURIWA was reacting to the decision by the APC’s Presidential candidate in the 2023 General Elections, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to pick former Borno State Governor, Kashim Ibrahim Shettima as his running mate.
Shettima, a Muslim from the North East region of the country, is a two-term governor of the state and presently the senator representing Borno Central senatorial zone in the National Assembly; a position he has held since 2019.
It would be recalled that while addressing journalists in Katsina State on Sunday, Tinubu said he has settled for Senator Shettima as his running mate.
Tinubu and some stakeholders of the ruling party met President Muhammadu Buhari in Daura Katsina State on Sunday.
The selection of Shettima has now put to bed the hopes of some political and religious advocates to see the APC standard bearer pick a Christian for the position.
The move has also irked the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) which pulled its support for the Tinubu candidacy.
However, reacting to the announcement by Tinubu on his choice of Senator Kashima as running mate, HURIWA described the former Borno governor as ‘a hardcore Islamist and hater of Christians.’
“The decision is irresponsible, irrational, unpatriotic, unconstitutional and clearly shows that the Islamists and terrorists of the Boko Haram and ISWAP genre have actively hijacked All Progressives Congress so as to declare full Islamic State in Nigeria.
HURIWA called on Nigerians to make their choice of the best President of Nigeria between the Labour Party’s Peter Obi/Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar/Governor Ifeanyi Okowa because, in the consideration of the rights group, ‘any vote donated to the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress is a vote for the disintegration of Nigeria after the exit of President Muhammadu Buhari assuming without conceding that the APC will win.’
HURIWA further faulted the decision saying ‘the experience of a Muslim-Muslim ticket in Kaduna State since the last five years by Governor Nasir El-Rufai has shown that the government formed by all Muslims chief executives inevitably connives with terrorists to kill Christians,’ even as the rights group added that ‘it amounts to discrimination of the non-Muslims which constitute an infraction against Section 42(1) of the Constitution and violation of broad-based composition of government as spelt out in section 14(3) of the Constitution on Federal Character Principles in a appointments in Nigeria.’
