2023: Northern leaders reject APC Muslim-Muslim ticket, throw weight behind Atiku

The Northern Leaders Consultative Forum, a body comprised of Muslim and Christian leaders across the 19 Northern States and FCT, has declared its unflinching support for the Peoples Democratic Party PDP presidential candidate, Alh Atiku Abubakar.

This was disclosed in a statement issued by the forum and sighed by Professor Doknan Sheni, on Friday December 2, 2022.

According to the forum, the decision was necessitated by the rejection of the same faith Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC.

The Forum set up a Technical Criteria Committee with the mandate to develop a framework and criteria for the assessment of the leading political parties and their presidential candidates and recommend the ticket that represents our religious, ethnic and geographical diversities, capable of bringing about peace, unity, cohesion and inclusiveness.

The forum maintained that the APC same faith (Muslim-Muslim) ticket excludes a large demography of Christians who do not feel represented by the ticket.

“The APC presidential ticket does not promote inclusiveness, unity, religious harmony and cohesion. A large population of Muslims have also expressed reservations to this ticket and have called for fairness and inclusivity,” said the forum.

“Consequently, this ticket is outrightly rejected. The forum hereby calls on all lovers of democracy, peaceful coexistence, unity and religious harmony to reject the ticket in its entirety,” it added.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket is representative of our religious diversity as a people, the leaders agreed.

They stressed that the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar is the only candidate among the candidates of the four leading political parties that has the knowledge and experience of managing the country at the presidential level.

“This gives him the advantage to set the ball rolling from day one.”

It stated further that the PDP presidential candidate has a track record of working harmoniously with all classes of people across religious and ethnic divides.

“The PDP presidential candidate is a well-known talent hunter who has demonstrated capacity to hunt highly experienced talents across different sectors and bring them into government.

“This country needs highly talented people at this critical time to pull the country out of the doldrums and bring it back to the path of stability, security and prosperity,” it stated.

“The forum therefore adopts the PDP and the Atiku/Okowa Presidential ticket as the right ticket to support in the 2023 presidential elections, as it addresses all the concerns of inclusiveness, fairness and national cohesion.

“The forum recommends for support the Atiku Abubakar/Ifeanyi okowa presidential ticket to all well-meaning Nigerians across the ethnic, sectional and religious diversities, in order to foster unity, peace, development and progress,” it concluded.