Former Borno state governor Kashim Shettima says the north can’t afford to let Bola Tinubu, the former Lagos governor, down because he worked so hard to get President Muhammadu Buhari elected.
The former Lagos governor has indicated interest in running for president in 2023.
Buhari would not have been president in 2015 if the southwest had not supported him, Shettima stated in an interview with Daily Trust.
“Buhari is immensely popular in the North. He has cult-like followership of nearly 15 million people. But that never took him to the presidency until we had a handshake across the Niger with the west,” he said.
“Wrongly, he was assumed to be a northern’ hegemonist’, a provincial politician, even a religious bigot by some of our compatriots in the southern part of the country. It was the southwest political machine that repackaged and resold the Buhari brand to Nigerians in 2015.
“Without the block support of the South-West, it would have been difficult for President Buhari to emerge as the candidate of the APC. Tinubu worked for Buhari in 2015 and in 2019.
“This is why some of us find it utterly disgusting when some of the folks who vigorously worked against Buhari’s ambition in 2014 have done some political somersaults and are now members of what I called Buharist Church of Latter Day Saints, hectoring down on us and liberally dropping the president’s name.”
