The spokesperson for Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Campaign Management Committee, Senator Dino Melaye has chided the All Progressives Congress (APC) vice presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, referring to him as the “Grand commander of Bandits” over his attack on its standard bearer, Atiku Abubakar.
Shettima and the APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu had in Lagos on Tuesday, November 1, questioned Atiku’s capacity to unite the country, with Shettima particularly promising to end the former vice president’s political career in 2023.
In a statement he signed Wednesday, Melaye described Shettima and the APC as “jesters in the political space”.
Read the full statement below:
“Overwhelmed by the conviviality of a civil atmosphere Kashim Shettima, the Grand commander of Bandits and the running mate of the Presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress ( APC), who has gathered enough funds from his field soldiers to be so intoxicated as to engage in a verbal gibberish that is only permissible in Sambisa Forest. He has been seen in a footage where he was exciting a rented crowd with whimsical pot shots at His Excellency Atiku Abubakar.
“It was the same hallucination that made Shettima to have defined an illusory presidency where he would create an office for Boko Haram in the villa, with him in charge of the security of our precious Nigeria.
“The emergence of the garrulous, intemperate and indecorous Shettima is another manifestation of the failure of APC, which after weeks of shilly-shally to fill the slot of a running mate ultimately settled for a rustic jejune whose concept of a suit is the sartorial equivalence of Babanriga.
“Nigerians are again invited to critically assess the jesters in the political space whose understanding of political campaign is the acerbic deployment of an unsterilised mouth.
“The joke rested squarely on Shettima, who in an attempt to desecrate the wholesomeness of Abubakar Atiku succeeded in promoting the Presidential campaign front runner as a productive, enterprising and job- creating office seeker who does not fit into the mould of rent seekers like Shettima and his Presidential campaign boss.
“Furthermore, in attempting to cast aspersions at Atiku’s high profile Shettima only succeeded to promote him as a global citizen who is well acceptable in Dubai, UAE and indeed America where he’s currently engaging in deep political activities with Nigerians in diaspora, high profile American government officials and the American business community.
“Great Nigerian patriots are called upon to begin to separate the wheat from the chaff, because while Shettima, Tinubu and other APC laggards focus on personality rarher than programmes, Atiku and Okowa being urbane, decoruos , savvy and focused have continued to conduct themselves with decency and engaging with Nigerians on the great prospects of a prosperous, competitive and high ranking nation under the impending administration of PDP.
“In a decent country 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. It is sad that we are in a country where the morally bankrupt, economically ruinous and intellectually incompetent administration of APC has held sway for 8 disastrous years. Nigerians must reject Shettima and his gang, because as Bob Marley sang no one can free us but ourselves.”