Barely 4 weeks to the 2023 Presidential elections, a former chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Director of Civil Society in the Presidential Campaign Council of the party, Hajiya Naja’atu Muhammad, has regretted APC’s decision to pick Sen. Bola Tinubu ahead of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo as its candidate for the election.
Hajiya Muhammad who recently retired from party politics and resigned her position from the APC PCC, disclosed in an interview with The Whistler.
She said would have put her life on the line for Osinbajo if the ticket was given to him.
According to the Kano-born politician, “If you had given me Osinbajo, I swear I would have put my life on the line for Osinbajo, because he is a better person, he’s open, he’s proactive and he puts his eye on the ball and looks at Nigeria holistically.”
Extolling the leadership qualities of the VP as the basis of her choice, Hajiya Muhammad said “the few months that he (Osinbajo) was given the opportunity to act he changed things, so why should I be sentimental.”
She decried the decision of some leaders of the party and the South West region, to support Tinubu instead of of VP, noting that “Nigeria has become the personal property of some elites.”
She said, “If the Yorubas were serious why not give it to Osinbajo, who is a pastor, you are doing Muslim-Muslim. The holy prophet said a just atheist is better than an unjust Muslim. So, why do I care about Muslim-Muslim?”
“But they are busy not only galvanizing the polity but deceiving people, how Islamic are they? Somebody that could not even read Fatiha is calling himself a Muslim, without Fatiha you can’t pray, which means he has never prayed, what nonsense is that,” she added.
Speaking further, she said “I was in the campaign for Yola, and we had to beg them to take the mic from him, everything about Tinubu is based on lies. Imagine he is an Hausa man, will he contest elections with all these gbese on top of him? In this campaign nobody should talk of corruption because they are corruption personified.”
She added that besides Osinbajo, Peter Obi of the Labour Party would have been another good choice but blamed his (Obi’s) inexperience and lack of structure among others as factors that will work against.
The political and civil rights activist said she could no longer continue with the struggle for a better Nigeria under the platform of the proposed Tinubu presidency.
