The All Progressives Congress national stakeholders have called on the party’s leadership to narrow the search for its 2023 vice-presidential candidate to a northern Christian.

Aliyu Audu, national coordinator of the group, stated this at a news conference on Monday.

He added that picking a northern christian as the party’s vice-presidential candidate would ensure national inclusion and help to manage differences and promote national unity.

“Having successfully crossed the hurdle of producing a presidential candidate from the southern region in the person of Senator Bola Tinubu, the APC is now faced with yet another important hurdle it must cross before the deadline for the submission of nominations by political parties elapses,” he explained.

Mr Audu added that the bone of contention “this time around lies in which of the two dominant religious faiths” should produce the vice-presidential candidate.

He added that the APC national stakeholders were concerned about the controversy which had heated the polity in the last few days.

“Why we are conscious of the fact that religion should not be a determining factor in our leadership selection process, the peculiar circumstance the nation finds itself in calls for reflection in the decisions we take, so long as they border on our national lives,” Mr Audu stressed. “Today, the country is deeply divided within our fault lines of ethnicity and religion and we cannot afford to jettison these sensibilities in critical decision making.”

The APC stakeholder urged the ruling party to be guided by “these sensibilities” in selecting Mr Tinubu’s running mate.

He added that to do otherwise, would be to further fuel “what divided us and gave room for mischief-makers to take advantage of our differences.”

(NAN)