Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State has defended the same faith presidential ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), insisting that competence matters the most.
The governor spoke on the heels of criticisms that greeted the APC presidential ticket of Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, both of the Muslim faith.
In an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, the governor maintained that other issues, not religion, should be on the front burner in the lead-up to the presidential election next year.
“If you had listened to my lecture today, I was very clear. I said that religion is not the issue now. We have other issues that should be on the front burner today -restructuring; rotational presidency,” Akeredolu said on Wednesday.
“When you talk about religion, I am saying religion should have no part to play. Competence, knowledge, and your track record should come to play in this instance,” he added.
According to him, his stance is not influenced by the fact that Tinubu will be on the ballot next year. Rather, he pinned it on power rotation to southern Nigeria.
“If you listen to my lecture, I said if Obi is elected, that would be alright; if Bola Tinubu is elected, that would be alright. For me, it must come to the south,” the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), explained.
He maintained that the country’s power-sharing deal better known as zoning should be respected.
As far as he is concerned, “since 1999, there is an understanding that we move from north to south, rotate the presidency, and that if today, we have people who want to deploy what I will call manipulation of our people on religious basis to think you can change it, then we should not accept it”.
