Kashim Shettima, the vice presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC), has been accused by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of hindering former president Goodluck Jonathan’s efforts to combat Boko Haram militants.
While Jonathan was President of Nigeria from 2010 until 2015, Shettima served as governor of Borno from May 2011 till May 2019.
This week, the APC vice presidential candidate and Jonathan celebrated the 70th birthday of the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Kukah, and posed for a photo with him at a celebratory gathering.
Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the APC, had also visited Jonathan in Abuja before the event.
A statement released on Thursday by PDP National Publicity Secretary Debo Ologunagba, however, blasted the two for their “disgraceful and hypocritical behaviour” after they were accused of vilifying Jonathan.
The PDP spokesman further said it is disgraceful that Tinubu and Shettima suddenly distance themselves from the “abysmal failure” of President Muhammadu Buhari.
APC presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, his running mate Senator Kashim Shettima, and other APC leaders shamelessly orchestrated a photo opportunity with Peoples Democratic Party’s distinguished and successful former President Goodluck Jonathan in an effort to whitewash their battered public image, identify with the obvious successes of the PDP, and pose as statesmen (PDP).
“This is a patriotic Nigerian leader whose PDP-led purposeful and successful administration the APC leaders mercilessly persecuted, continually insulted, labeled, destroyed, and discredited for their selfish power-grabbing enterprise,” the statement stated in part.
To destroy the Jonathan-led PDP government, Asiwaju Tinubu fabricated economic lies, propaganda, and phony figures, and he funded a near-riotous demonstration, which Nigerians have not forgotten.
For his part, Sen. Shettima sabotaged and hampered Jonathan’s administration in its efforts to reduce insecurity in Borno State, as many Nigerians will know from his time as governor.
A security report and directive to close schools in remote parts of Borno State and relocate students to the more secure capital of Maiduguri to write their GCE examinations were ignored by the APC vice presidential candidate as governor of Borno State, and this opened the door for the cruel abduction of school girls in Chibok, Borno State.
The abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls was delayed because “then Governor Shettima abdicated his duties as a chief security official and apparently withheld crucial security information in preference to non-state actors including terrorist groups,” the article reads.
