The Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress is something that Femi Fani-Kayode, a former minister of aviation, claims he has “prayed about”.
On Wednesday, Fani-Kayode gave a speech during an interview on Channels Television.
The former Borno governor and Muslim Kashim Shettima was chosen by Bola Tinubu, the APC candidate for president, to be his running mate in the 2023 election.
Key players, particularly the Christian Association of Nigeria, have criticized the development.
When questioned about the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC in light of his prior remarks, the former minister claimed that since he had joined the party, he had realized that it had “completely changed,” and that the notion that the nation had become Fulani had been abandoned.
According to Fani-Kayode, the presidential candidates’ particular skills matter more than their religious beliefs.
“We spoke about Fulanisation, that has been thrown out of the window now because power has been shifted to the south by the APC, the party we accused of that,” he said.
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“Secondly, we spoke about Islamisation. Since I joined APC, I realised that, like I said earlier, things have completely changed.
“A situation whereby in this country today we have, no less than 20 Christian governors. The whole of the south-west has Christian governors, except for Osun state, which has now changed because we have a Christian governor who is coming in.
“A situation like that tells you clearly that the country cannot be Islamised and neither is our party APC interested in that. What is happening as far as I’m concerned is this, we have reformed and moving forward.
“Same faith ticket was a challenge but we looked into it. I prayed about it, I consulted, I spoke to Kashim because all along my position has been – it all depends who the vice-president is.
“It is not about the faith. It is about the individual and if the individual is a Muslim that I can live with, I’m prepared to live with that. I spoke to this man and Tinubu.
“The candidate himself returned schools to the missionaries in Lagos something that had not been done before. The candidate gave land to so many of these mega churches in Lagos when he was governor and since that time they have been granted licences to build churches.
“Go to the north, the vice, that is Shettima himself, I met him for over three hours, we discussed. I looked into the man’s eyes and raised a number of pertinent questions which I needed to be satisfied with and I was satisfied with his answers.
“He has built more churches in Borno state than any other before him and since that time and he won the confidence of many Christians. So the issue of Islamisation no longer arises.”