I never meant to ridicule Osinbajo, Lawan —Shettima clarifies comments on the VP

Kashim Shettima, a former Governor of Borno State, has clarified comments made about Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and Senate President Ahmad Lawan, during a recent interview on Channels TV.

Shettima made this clarification via a Twitter thread, in the aftermath of the bedlam generated within the polity by his comments.

During the interview, the former Governor said although Osinbajo is competent, Tinubu will make a better president.

“Nobody has doubted the competence of professor Osinbajo. He’s a very cerebral person, but we believe that in terms of intellect, capacity, reach and the ability to move this nation forward, and most importantly, for us to win the upcoming election, the best candidate that the APC has is asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” Shettima said.

“Osinbajo is a good man; he’s a nice man. But nice men do not make good leaders, because nice men tend to be nasty. Nice men should be selling popcorn, ice cream.

“But he’s a very decent person. I can’t doubt that. He’s my personal friend and I’ll rather not comment on his person. But he’s a very decent man. That I can tell you.”

Regarding Lawan, he said, “I played a very prominent role in his (Lawan’s) emergence as the President of the Senate, against my own kinsman, Mohammed Ndume, but leadership goes beyond sentiment. He has spent 20 years in the senate. He has a PhD in Geography. He had a brief stint in academia before joining politics. Does he have the administrative skill set to rule a complex nation like ours? This is the million-dollar question.

Read also :Lawan lacks the skills to rule Nigeria — Ex-Gov Shettima

“He cannot stand shoulder to shoulder with Atiku Abubakar. Lawan became a senator with 144,000 votes, I became a senator with votes that is two and half times what he garnered in Yobe.

“Go to Ohiafia and ask of Ahmad Lawan, the first thing that will come to their mind is that of a tomato dealer from Maiduguri. Go to any other part of the south, does the name sell?”

However, in a bid to douse the tension generated by his statement, Shettima tweeted that he never meant to denigrate any aspirant since everyone is working towards the party’s unity.

“I never set out to denigrate the personality of any aspirant, and definitely not that of my dear friends and allies. None of them is an opponent, so their aspiration isn’t a threat to us.

“My assessment of the Vice President Osinbajo and Senate President Lawan were well-intentioned.

“I never set out to subject them to ridicule but, rather, to stir up interest in the contrasting virtues of the cast of aspirants putting up a fight against my preferred aspirant, one most favoured and advantaged to guarantee APC’s victory in the forthcoming presidential election.

“My words weren’t woven to portray them as unworthy aspirants, but merely to qualify them as non-threatening contenders.

“I, however, take full responsibility for my utterances and wish to appeal to our teeming supporters to neither take my words out of their metaphoric contexts,” he clarified.

In conclusion, Shettima apologised to the Vice-President over the tension generated by his statement during the interview.

“I hereby tender my unreserved apologies to the Vice President and the President of the Senate for the unintended pains my jibes might have caused them and their families and supporters,” he tweeted.

My @channelstv Interview Taken Out of Context

1. When I appeared on Channels TV last Thursday amidst the tension rippling through our political arena, it was to underline the promise @officialABAT’s presidential bid held for those yet to establish the certainty of the hurdle…

— Kashim Shettima (@KashimSM) June 5, 2022

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