Following the sudden appearance of his 2019 presidential campaign poster on major streets in Abuja and Kaduna on Sunday, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State has written to the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, requesting for an immediate investigation into the source of the campaign posters.
Shettima said while he was not losing sleep over whatever political objective the sponsors aimed to achieve, he said his major concern was his believe those behind the posters had a “wicked agenda” of undermining the current cohesion between the Borno State government and President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration towards ending the Boko Haram insurgency.
The campaign posters, which bore pictures of Shettima “Truthful Leader” for President in 2019 and Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha “The Nationalist” as running mate on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was sponsored by a group known as Movement for Democratic Self-Determination.
Coming on the heels of Gov. Okorocha’s disapproval of the posters, which he described as “another mischief by some elements cowed by his monumental achievements in Imo”, Gov. Shettima, in the letter to the IGP with reference number: BOSLO/ABJ/14/IV/407, called for the immediate arrest and prosecution of the sponsors of the posters.
The letter dated May 29, 2016 and signed by the Permanent Secretary in charge of the Borno Government House and Security, Mr Ahmed Sanda, said: “I have been directed by His Excellency, the Executive governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, to bring to the IGP’s notice, dozens of fraudulently produced posters bearing his name and picture claiming he is aspiring for the 2019 Presidency. The posters have been pasted on some routes in Abuja and Kaduna.
“Governor Kashim Shettima regards this development as a highly mischievous plot that is aimed at destabilizing the emerging peace in Borno State through creation of unnecessary political tension, while on the other hand, it might aim at creating gap between the Borno State government and the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration (which just marked its first year in office) with a wicked agenda of undermining the current cohesion between the two arms of government, working together in the last one year, for the collective goal of ending the Boko Haram insurgency.
“From a different information we have gathered, the posters are suspected to be the handiwork of a particular group of politicians, trying to set the Borno State government and the APC in the state, against the national headquarters of the APC and the federal government, so as to lay a ground for a plan by the group of politicians to join the APC in Borno State and hijack the party’s machinery”.
