Vice President Shettima Takes On Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar 8 times presidential contestants and Former Governor of Anambra state Peter Obi 1 time presidential contestants and virtual winner of 2023 election at the presidential Campaign Council Inauguration for 2027 presidential Election.

Shettima Takes On Atiku and Peter Obi at APC Presidential Campaign Council Inauguration.

The architect of modern Nigeria, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, the mother of the nation, the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, CON, my dear wife, Mrs. Nana Shettima.

For paucity of time, I wish to recognize the President of the Senate and the Right Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, to recognize and appreciate all members of the National Assembly, past and present.

I would also like to recognize the Governor of Kwara State and Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, and the Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, Senator Hope Uzodimma, to appreciate and celebrate all our executive governors seated here.

The National Chairman of our party is my point of reference to recognize and appreciate the entire leadership of our great party.

I crave your indulgence, Your Excellency, to single out for special recognition a gentleman par excellence, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, a former President of the Senate, Distinguished Senator Anyim Pius Anyim.

Your Excellency, I wish to recognize two elder statesmen here, Aremo Osoba, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, and special recognition to my boss, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.

I want to use Senator Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar as my point of reference to recognize and appreciate all members of the Presidential Campaign Council.

Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, lend me your ears.

The first duty of talent is to recognize what it cannot accomplish alone. No individual, however gifted, can complete the task before us in isolation. Each member of this Presidential Campaign Council has been chosen for a talent and entrusted with a purpose.

Our strength is our capacity to labor in concert, our willingness to share our hopes, our imagination to enlarge our dreams, our courage to dare in fellowship, our discipline to plan with purpose, and our faith in one another to translate our ideas into action. Through that fellowship, we shall make history again.

In January 2022, I reminded this nation that its future required a leader whose ideas could survive scrutiny, a leader whose competence has survived adversity, a leader whose sympathies extended beyond faith and ethnicity. I spoke of the then Presidential aspirant Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

I told this nation that he had built political shelter for others when it meant surrender from his greater personal comfort. This was a defining moment in our quest to choose a builder who understood both the Nigerian economy and the Nigerian condition.

And as evidence of his generosity of spirit and political accommodation, I reminded this nation that even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s presidential bid in 2007 found refuge in the political house President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had built. That generosity remains part of our political history. However inconvenient it may now be to those who once benefited from it, the generosity they enjoyed remains part of their history; they cannot edit it today.

Today we stand justified. His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, inherited immense expectations on an economy approaching fiscal catastrophe. He confronted the subsidy burden and the currency distortion that rewarded access above enterprise.

None of us needs a lecture on the courage those decisions demanded. Had he surrendered to expediency, some of today’s critics, who are of course necessary in every democracy, might have been writing their epistles on a collapsed economy from the comfort of London, Dubai, Morocco, or New York City.

Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, that Nigeria has withstood geopolitical turmoil, global energy shocks and the pressure upon its finances is, in our estimation, a massive show of the political magician we elected to lead this nation.

President Tinubu understands that a leader must sometimes spend his popularity to preserve his country’s possibilities. He has refused to purchase an afternoon of applause at the expense of our children’s tomorrow.

The evidence provides grounds for confidence. The economy grew by 4.2 percent in the first half of 2026, and gross external reserves exceeded fifty-eight billion dollars this week, the highest since November 2008. State revenues have strengthened.

The next obligation is to turn these gains into jobs, affordable food, and dependable services. Nigerians deserve to feel the recovery they have financed through sacrifice.

When we sought office, prophets of division predicted our disintegration. Under President Tinubu, the APC has sustained a broad national coalition. Meanwhile, those aspiring to rescue Nigeria cannot keep their own political households intact. So I ask: if reconciling a few party leaders proves difficult, how will you reconcile the interests of over two hundred million citizens?

Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, this political season has become a masterclass in cinematic comedy. Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has worn the toga of capitalism throughout his political career, now sounds like the legitimate offspring of Vladimir Lenin and Meles Zenawi, an ideological union that would have astonished even the most imaginative historians of communism.

His proposal for production subsidies raises questions that ideological costume changes cannot answer. Who pays? Who benefits? And which competing priorities must surrender their funding? A change of ideological wardrobe cannot balance a national budget.

Political ambition is not merely the desire to occupy public office. It is a test of character, intellectual maturity, and responsibility. The higher the office a person seeks, the greater the discipline expected in his words, conduct, and relationship with public institutions.

The presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not an ordinary political prize. It is the highest expression of constitutional authority in our country. And those who aspire to occupy it must demonstrate, even before they get there, the qualities they will expect of themselves if entrusted with the responsibility of leading more than two hundred million Nigerians.

Those who come to equity must come with clean hands. You can call him Bola. If you like, you can call him Adekunle. But the truth is that he is the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, Atiku Abubakar. I will still respect him and call him as former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. I will not follow suit with the maverick Bidi Lawal and call him Kachalla, no.

But believe me, Atiku Abubakar, who has contested for the presidency of this country for the eighth time, is no Abraham Lincoln. He is more of Odinga Odinga.

Then comes my very good friend, Mr. Peter Obi, the master of bogus statistics and incoherent economic prescriptions, who seems convinced that a size thirty-six shirt tailored for Bangladesh would somehow fit Nigeria’s size fifty-two frame. His fascination with foreign comparisons often overlooks the peculiarities that distinguish one nation from another.

Governance is an art that demands mastery of context, whether social, economic, political, or institutional. What succeeds in Bangladesh cannot simply be transplanted to Nigeria without accounting for the differences in our populations, economic structures, institutions, and national circumstances. A country of over two hundred and fifty million people cannot be governed through borrowed statistics and economic prescriptions detached from its peculiarities.

I respect Peter Obi. But he has gone beyond his mastery philosophy to make bogus claim about winning the 2023 presidential elections without adducing a shred of evidence to buttress his assertion. This is called delusion of grandeur.

Your Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, our contest is with the politics of yesterday dressed as tomorrow’s deliverance. We must answer this stone-age idealism with organization, persuasion, and results.

Every committee of the Presidential Campaign Council must earn its place through hard work. Every community must hear our case, and every grievance must receive a patient hearing. The inauguration of the Presidential Campaign Council must turn us back to our communities with the humility to listen and the discipline to organize.

President Tinubu deserves a second term because the work has acquired momentum that Nigeria cannot afford to squander. Neither a latter-day Chairman Mao nor an electoral baron can wish prosperity into existence. We must protect the reforms, improve their execution, and carry their benefits from the treasury to the household.

Our appeal in 2027 must therefore be worthy of the confidence we sought in 2022. We chose a leader capable of building beyond himself. We must now secure the time for those foundations to serve generations beyond us. We owe our grandchildren institutions stronger than our ambitions.

May this council earn the victory that turns today’s sacrifices into tomorrow’s inheritance.

We have the capacity to respond to all sorts of innuendos and outright lies that our political opponents are trading on, but we won’t fall into their traps. We’ll give them facts, we’ll give them statistics. We argue with reason, not with sentiments, not with exaggerated truths or fabricated lies.

If you have the evidence of your competence, bring it forward. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of arithmetic can be a tax collector, but the ability to collect taxes does not transform one into an economic guru. So people should avoid listening to voodoo economists and people who do not understand the dynamics of a modern economy.

With all due respect to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, he was trained in Kano School of Hygiene as a drugagari in Hausa, or ole ole in Yoruba. But for the rest of the duration of this campaign, we’ll discuss ideas, we’ll discuss policies, but we’ll treat all our opponents with respect and dignity. They are not our enemies; they are our brothers, they are our countrymen, they are our leaders.

But let us make it very clear: if anyone trades insults and takes these poor men seated here for granted, we will reply appropriately. Anyone who is not willing to respect others has no right to be respected.

I want to thank you most sincerely, on behalf of my principal, for this beautiful gathering. Thank you.

God bless His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. God bless the All Progressives Congress and all its members, and God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.