Previously, the Northern Christian leaders of the APC, led by Babachir Lawal and Yakubu Dogara, had abandoned Bola Tinubu in favor of other presidential candidates. In response, the APC presidential candidate for the 2023 elections maintained that the group is not affiliated with the ruling party and is a group of “impostors.” Tinubu stated that Lawal and Dogara’s claims about the ruling party’s same-faith ticket are false.
This came as he declared that the former Speaker is no longer a member of the ruling party and thus cannot speak for any group of APC members. Tinubu was reacting to the outcome of a meeting convened by Dogara with some Northern Muslim groups on Sunday, October 9, in which the former speaker stated that they would support one of the opposition presidential candidates in order to defeat the APC’s same-faith ticket. Bayo Onanuga, the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council’s director of media and publicity, stated that;
“Dogara has apparently lost his mind since he could not realise his self-imposed ambition to be on the presidential ticket of All Progressives Congress.”