Shettima apologizes to Osinbajo, Lawan over VP selling ice cream, gala comment
Kassim Shettima, a former Governor of Borno State, has tendered his apology to the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo and the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, over the “pains” the comments he recently made may have caused them.
Shettima said the comments he recently made about the duo were not to tarnish their image or label them as unworthy presidential aspirants.
The former governor said his comments were not to reduce the Vice President and the Senate President.
He said his remarks were “merely to qualify them as non-threatening contenders” to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a national leader of APC.
Recall that Shettima has said that Osinbajo was not fit to be the next President of Nigeria.
He has while speaking on Channels Television, said that Osinbajo’s “delightful” character cannot make him the President but rather he should be selling Gala and popcorn.
A statement Shettima titled: “My Channels TV Interview Taken Out of Context” partly reads: “When I appeared on Channels TV last Thursday amidst the tension rippling through our political arena, it was to underline the promise Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential bid held for those yet to establish the certainty of the hurdle ahead of the APC. I never set out to denigrate the personality of any aspirant, and definitely not that of my dear friends and allies.
“My assessments of Yemi Osinbajo, and the President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan, were well-intentioned.
“I never set out to subject them to ridicule but, rather, to stir up interest in the contrasting virtues of the cast of aspirants putting up a fight against my preferred aspirant, one most favoured and advantaged to guarantee APC’s victory in the forthcoming presidential election.
“The interpretations of my remarks on Osinbajo and Senator Lawan are, thus, being done literally and overblown. My words weren’t woven to portray them as unworthy aspirants, but merely to qualify them as non-threatening contenders.
“I, however, take full responsibility for my utterances and wish to appeal to our teeming supporters to neither take my words out of their metaphoric contexts nor interpret them as a measure and declaration of hostility towards my dear friends and allies.
“I, hereby, tender my unreserved apologies to the Vice President and the President of the Senate for the unintended pains my jibes might have caused them and their families and supporters.”
He therefore called on supporters of all presidential aspirants to play a uniting role in the interest of the party.
Shettima is one of the strong loyalists of the national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu.
