Tinubu Campaign Organisation has dismissed the accusations that the clergymen who attended the unveiling of the party’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator Kashim Shettima were fake.
The ruling party on Wednesday unveiled the former Borno State governor as its vice-presidential candidate for the 2023 general elections at the Shehu Yar’adua centre in Abuja.
Since the pictures of the clergymen who graced the event surfaced on social media, there has been an outrage on social media, with the critics alleging that the clerics were impostors hired by Tinubu and the APC to create the false impression that his decision to pick a fellow Muslim despite strong objections and national security implications was accepted by the Christian community.
Addressing the criticisms, the Director, Media & Communication of Tinubu Campaign Organisation, Bayo Onanuga, stressed that the clergymen were not fake as widely rumoured on social media, adding that they were budding clerics.
“We want to say that those clergymen were not fake, not mechanics or yam sellers as the purveyors of hatred have made Nigerians believe in the social media. They are not big names in Christendom yet, but they are gradually building up their missions,” Onanuga wrote in a press release made available to newsmen on Thursday.
“They are church leaders who genuinely believe that Nigerians must eschew politics of hatred and religious bigotry and rather embrace politics of peace and nation building.”
Onanuga described the social media buzz about the presence of the clerics as a calculated ploy by those seeking the downfall of the party’s presidential candidate and running mate to distract the public from the success of the event.
“The orchestrated social media sensation over the presence of the men is needless and all calculated to detract from the huge success recorded at the momentous event on Wednesday,” he explained.
“We, therefore, deplore the hysterical twisting of the presence of these men and women in cassocks and the false accusation against our candidates, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Senator Shettima.
“We are well aware that the opposition parties and the sponsors of the social media charade are jittery and threatened by the intimidating political credentials of our candidates. The only way they hope to shift the attention of public scrutiny away from their uninspiring candidates and credentials is to create social media distraction.”
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