APC Running Mate: Why We’re Not Comfortable With Northern Christian – Arewa Leader

Some leaders in the Northern part of the country have given reasons a Christian from the region could not be chosen as the running mate to the Presidential Candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. According to a leading monarch in Niger State, who spoke exclusively with Saturday Telegraph recently, the reason for this is premised on what he (the traditional ruler) referred to as the ‘detachment’ of Christian elite from the mainstream politics of the region.

The choice of a former Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, caused a lot of uproar as Christians in the country, particularly in the North, have been up in arms against the choice because of the same faith the ticket presented. Responding to the controversy generated, leaders of the APC stated that the decision was more of political expediency rather than a deliberate slight on the Christian community in the country.

Commenting on the development in a chat with our correspondent in Abuja recently, the prominent traditionalist, who pleaded not to be named so as not to further inflame the passion already generated, blamed the development on Northern Christian leaders. “How do you expect us to trust them when all our Christian brothers and sisters would prefer to go to the South for solutions to their problems rather than sit with us (in the North) to discuss the problems?

That is the crux of the matter,” said the monarch who clearly spoke the mind of the North. “This wasn’t the situation during the lifetime of the former leader of the North, the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, who tried all he could to unite the region. If our Christian brothers and sisters had kept faith with the dream and vision of the late Premier of the North, possibly this kind of issue couldn’t have arisen at all,” he said.