A spokesman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council and former Aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, had chided spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign council, Senator Dino Melaye, for calling vice presidential candidate of the governing party, Sen Kashim Shettima a boko haram commander.
Rising in defence of the former Borno State governor, Fani-Kayode who is the director of Special Media Projects, Special Operations and New Media of the Tinubu/Shettima campaign council described Senator Shettima as “a refined, decent and godly man, who simply want to help his nation and ensure we move forward as a people.”
Melaye had alleged that Shettima was planning to establish an office for the Boko Haram terrorists at the presidential villa if he and the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, win the 2023 presidential poll.
The Atiku campaign spokesman noted that in a decent clime, Shettima “ought to be in jail to pay for the blood of innocent citizens and the deprivation that lawful Nigerians have suffered from his private army.”
But hitting back at Melaye in a statement he issued on Thursday in Abuja, Fani-Kayode recalled that Melaye’s allegation against Shettima had been investigated over and over again but nothing incriminating was found against the APC Vice presidential candidate.
He said, “The allegation against Shetimma is absurd; it is designed to terrify the people and make them feel that APC is a party of terrorists and that our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is a man that condone terrorism. Dino’s statement is a direct attack on if Vice Presudential candidate. It has no bases.
“This allegation has been investigated over and over again. All these while there have been no evidence adduced to suggest that it is true, and actually it is not true.
“Senator Kassim Shetimma is a refined, decent and godly man, who simply wants to help his nation and ensure we move forward as a people. If you look at his record in Borno State as a governor, before he went to serve as Senator, you will see what he did.
“If you look at his successor in office – Prof. Baba Gana Zulum, he too is doing a great job in Borno. That is not a legacy of a terrorist. What we have in Borno is a legacy of a great leader; that is what Shetimma stands for. For anybody to try to smear his name this way is a reflection of that person more than anything else. Not only was it a reflection of Melaye himself, it is also a reflection of the man (Atiku) he is speaking for.
“The truth is that Kashim Shetimma is 100 times a better man and we will prove that at the polls. We will defeat Atiku even in his local government area in Adamawa State by the grace of God.”
