Monday Quarterbacking: The Tinubu-Shettima Muslim-Muslim APC Presidential Ticket - by Bolaji Aluko

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Monday Quarterbacking:  The Tinubu-Shettima Muslim-Muslim APC Presidential Ticket*

The Tinubu pick has finally been made and announced, and the main field set: Abubakar Atiku/Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa (M-C); Peter Obi/Datti Baba-Ahmed (C-M) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu/Kashim Ibrahim Shettima (M-M).  None of the other fifteen political parties has a C-C or any other M-M ticket.

So why this M-M ticket, and what does it portend for the future?  Difficult to say, but here are some thoughts: 

1.  I will be convinced that a Northern Christian can win atop a Nigerian presidential ticket if and when a Northern Christian emerges Governor on his or her own steam in any one of  Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina or Kano states  - or even comes a close second.  

2.  Winning is one thing, performing well is another.  Mere winning by a Muslim-Muslim ticket  such as Tinubu-Shettima is nothing.  If it does well - well broadly-conceived like in tackling insecurity, corruption and the Economy, stupid, and we pray for the sake of the country that any winning ticket does  - then one will be forgiven when in comparison with past M-C or C-M tickets,  religion becomes truly irrelevant in presidential discourse in the future.

3.  Nigeria is in for an ethnic lesson: like Abacha, like Kingibe,  Shettima, Muslim he may be,  is minority Kanuri, cousins of the Yoruba, not Hausa, not Fulani.  He also comes from the center of insurgency, what with all suspicions of complicity, real or imagined.  

But the ticket must win first.  So let the People decide come February 2023.

In closing, back in 2019, Senator Ibrahim Shettima was invited to an Ado-Ekiti retreat of Ekiti State top government officials by Governor Kayode Fayemi. Governor Babatunde Fashola was also present.  Many things that Shettima said were off-camera at his request, but he was witty, incisive and cogent, a political tour-de-force regaling us largely about how he alighted on Prof. Zulum as his gubernatorial  successor in Borno State, among many other things about statecraft.   We were all impressed - at least I was -  maybe Fayemi more than others upon reflection.  Three years later, here we are: Shettima as Vice-Presidential candidate of APC, and Oyebanji as successor-designate in Ekiti State.

There is absolutely no doubt that this  M-M ticket of APC will have to work real hard, starting right away,  to convince our People of its appropriateness at this time of our nation.  It must  for example assist PMB to start fixing our badly-beaten country.   It has seven months to do so till February 2023  - no margin for error.  Not the traditional campaigning of "I will do this, I will do that", because they will be asked "Why is your Party not doing it right now?"

There you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

July 11, 2022

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Shettima, enabler of the Chibok crisis by keeping the school open against the orders of the fed govt.

i was thinking of voting Tinubu, but after this, Tinubu's politics looks increasingly worrisome,   complementing his earlier  ''where are the cows'', pretending ignorance of the highly mobile Fulani herdsmen attack groups, his reported self distancing from Amotekun, the SW self defence force agast violent Fulani herdsmen and terrorists, after propping up the disastrous Buhari whom he had earlier critiqued in terms that indicated Buhari was not a valid candidate for leadership.

thanks

toyin

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