Ismaeel Ahmed, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says the ruling party has no plans to replace Vice-President Kashim Shettima on President Bola Tinubu’s re-election ticket.
The former member of the APC board of trustees (BoT) spoke
on Tuesday when he featured on Politics Today, a Channel Television programme.
Over the past few days, the APC has been in mild turmoil
over the fear that Shettima may not return as Tinubu’s running mate for the
2027 presidential election.
The situation peaked on Sunday during an APC stakeholders’
summit in Gombe that descended into chaos after some party chieftains endorsed
Tinubu for the 2027 presidential election without mentioning excluded Shettima
as his running mate.
Aggrieved party members disrupted the meeting, insisting
that Shettima must be on the ticket with Tinubu in 2027.
At the end of the crisis, Ali Bukar, the deputy national
chairman, was forced to endorse both Tinubu and Shettima for a second term.
Speaking on the incident, Ahmed said the fear of APC
dropping Shettima from the presidential ticket was fuelled by “malicious
rumours”.
He added that the reluctance to endorse the vice-president
alongside Tinubu was in accordance with the electoral laws.
“There is no discussion about substituting the
vice-president. There is no discussion about the vice-president being blocked,”
he said.
“Those are all malicious rumours by people who probably
don’t understand what is going on in the presidency or how the presidency
works.
“We have the mandate of the people for four years, and we
have used two years out of that.
“We have one year to the primaries and two years to the
general elections. We are a party in government, which means we are supposed to
obey the rules of INEC at a minimum.”
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com