Buhari might not allow Yoruba pick APC presidential ticket due to agitations from SE, SS – Shittu

Former Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, says President Muhammadu Buhari might not support any of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in picking the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 elections.

Speaking on Ibadan-based Raypower 95.1 FM’s programme Politics Today on Monday, Shittu said agitations from the South East and South South regions to produce the next president might make President Buhari not support a Yoruba aspirant.

Shittu said the process the party would eventually use to pick its presidential candidate would be different from the one through which Abdullahi Adamu emerged as the national chairman.

When asked by the anchor who will pick the APC presidential ticket between Tinubu and Osinbajo, the former minister said: “I will rather describe the selection process as a waiting game and I am not too sure we will be able to produce a presidential candidate the way we produced the national chairman.

“But I know Prof. Yemi Osinbajo is interested in the Presidential race and he will soon declare because his boys are going round the country and they have approached me. He was my classmate in law school and when he was commissioner in Lagos, I was also a commissioner at a time in Oyo State so he is someone I know very well.

“And I also know that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban of Nigeria is contesting politically and otherwise and I am not too sure whether our leader (President Buhari) will allow Yoruba to have the presidential ticket because of the agitation from South South and South East.

“I know two people from South South that want to contest and I also know that two aspirants from South East are also interested.”

On the chances of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) bloc against that of the Congress for Political Change (CPC), Shittu said: “For me it is not about blocs when talking about the electoral value of President Buhari because in 2011 when President Buhari contested, he garnered 12 million votes from the north. He only got 500,000 votes from the entire Southern Nigeria. In 2015, Buhari got 12 million votes from the North and got three million votes from the entire South.

“In 2019, President Buhari still garnered 12 million votes from the North and less than five million votes from the entire Southern Nigeria”