The youth wing of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, OYC, on Monday, kicked against the All Progressives Congress’ presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s choice of former Borno governor, Senator Kashim Shettima as his running mate.
Tinubu had on Sunday in Daura, Katsina State, announced Shettima, a fellow Muslim as his vice presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential election.
But the Ohanaeze youths at a press briefing in Enugu on Monday, said Shettima’s choice negated the law of natural justice.
OYC National President, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, who is also the National Organising Secretary of National Ethnic Nationalities Youth Leaders’ Council, said everything must be done by Nigerians to stop the ruling APC from destroying the country.
Nnabuike argued that the level of killings and violence targeted at Christians under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration was unprecedented.
He said that the Christian community would become a totally endangered specie under a Muslim-Muslim presidency.
The OYC president said Tinubu’s decision was an insult on millions of Christians in the country, adding that no religion had precedence over the other.
He said, “Today, we have deemed it fit to alert Nigerians of a looming danger ahead of the 2023 general elections. This is following Bola Tinubu’s decision to opt for a Muslim-Muslim ticket, despite obvious reasons why he should not go such a route.
“This is totally unacceptable and should be rejected by anyone who means well for the country.”
He recalled that, “in 2014, Tinubu made efforts to force Muslim-Muslim ticket on Buhari, but the President resisted it by listening to the wise counsel of people like former Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki. He balanced the ticket.
“Fast forward to seven years after, Tinubu now desperately wants to actualise a Muslim-Muslim presidency. There is more to this than meets the eyes. The insensitivity of Tinubu and the APC leadership is dreadful and that is their downfall.
“We see this as a grand conspiracy to sink Nigeria. How can anyone contemplate this arrangement in a multi- ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria?
“APC should forget 2023, they have shot themselves on the foot, we can’t allow them to destroy Nigeria. They lost the opportunity to compete very well in the forthcoming election. Nigerians, Christians and Muslim brothers who mean well for the country should rise and resist it to the last, it will never fly.
“The country has never been this polarized and every sensitive person should have been concerned with processes that would engender national cohesion and unity but what we have seen from APC’s Tinubu is a further division of the country
“Tinubu claimed the choice is based on competence- our question to him is simple: does it mean that from the 19 Northern States there is no competent Christian? We can see the obvious falsehood in Tinubu’s claims.
“No religion is more superior than the other, but this is what Tinubu is making people to believe, a situation that would throw the country into avoidable crisis.”
The OYC president urged Nigerians to place the country above self, stressing that, “justice and equity are the true ingredients of democracy.”
