All Progressives Congress vice presidential candidate Kashim Shettima says northerners should ditch Atiku Abubakar for his opposition to the enactment of Sharia rule across the region. 

Addressing party faithful at an APC local government conference in Abuja on Friday (February 10), Mr Shettima urged the northern voters to reject Mr Abubakar at the February 25 polls because he fought against the Islamic legal system in the North.

“This person you call your own says you should not call him ‘Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, but rather Atiku Abubakar’,” Mr Shettima told his audience in the Hausa language. “Your person says he is the only person that fights against Sharia in the north. Is that your person?”

The APC vice presidential candidate’s remarks is his latest attempt to whip up ethno-religious rhetoric against the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate.

Peoples Gazette had recently reported how Mr Shettima, at Emir Palace in Daura, Katsina, publicly challenged Mr Abubakar to come out and mention eight people he has mentored in the North; or the capital projects he executed in the North while he served as Nigeria’s vice president between 1999 to 2007.

Mr Shettima told his audience that Mr Abubakar’s presidency would not serve the North’s ethno-religious interests.

Mr Abubakar has repeatedly played up his moderate inclinations as a strength for his campaign, hoping to appeal to the country’s evenly-divided religious split for Muslims and Christians.

In doing so, he hoped ot cast himself as a well-rounded Nigerian for the rest of the country without necessarily losing his traditional support base in his northern region.

Still, opponents like Mr Shettima have warned that Mr Atiku’s mercurial position on ethno-religious matters should make it difficult to trust him.

In 2022, he initially condemned but then suddenly retracted the lynching of a Christian female university student in Sokoto by Islamic fundamentalists, who accused her of making blasphemous statements against Prophet Muhammad.

The prime suspect in the May 2022 violence has remained at large, despite videos of him in circulation.