Muslim-Muslim ticket: Tinubu replies former ally, Babachir Lawa, Dogara

Presidential flag bearer of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu has replied former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal and former House Speaker Yakubu Dogara over their opposition to his Muslim-Muslim joint ticket.

Recall that both Lawal and Dogara have expressed their opposition to the ticket, even coming out openly to say that they would support another presidential candidate in 2023.

Speaking through his Director, of Media and Publicity at the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, the APC presidential candidate said: “Dogara has apparently lost his mind since he could not realise his self-imposed ambition to be on the presidential ticket of All Progressives Congress.”

In a statement on Monday in Abuja, Tinubu said the former speaker has certainly become a reprobate and demagogue, delivering hate speeches and whipping up emotions, with the aim of setting our country ablaze.

“The Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council is therefore not surprised by media reports about a meeting of some so-called Northern Christian leaders, who claimed to be members of our All Progressives Congress that were championed by Dogara and his ilks. The claim was totally fraudulent.

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“Yakubu Dogara, the peripatetic and politically unstable politician who organised the meeting left our party officially and unceremoniously weeks ago. And those who attended the meeting were representing themselves, their selfish agenda, not Northern Christians.

The statement said a careful reading of the people who attended the “unholy meeting” he called also showed that they were all PDP members, masquerading as APC members.

“The APC PCC wondered how the assembly of strange bedfellows hoped to foster unity and cohesion in our country, when their candidate represents the antithesis of the goal, having emerged the greatest divider of our polity, between the north and south.

“All Nigerians are aware that Atiku’s emergence as the PDP presidential candidate grossly violated a power rotation code between the north and the south. His insistence on snatching and retaining what rightly belongs to another political region has triggered a crisis within his party, making him run from Port Harcourt to London to mend fences.

“We want to assure Dogara and his co-travellers fanning hate campaigns against our Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his running mate that they will fail spectacularly at the polls.

“From the engagements our leaders have had with men of all faiths, bigotry will not win next February election. What will prevail are the track records of our candidates and the solution-driven and all-inclusive progressive programmes the candidates offer Nigerians.

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“Asiwaju Tinubu and Senator Shettima are going into this campaign with clear objectives to engage Nigerians across the socio-economic brackets on policy actions that will make their lives better. Our candidates will not exploit our country’s fault lines to win the election and sell religion as Kool-Aid”, he said.