Former Nigerian lawmaker Senator Shehu Sani Saturday denied coordinating the purported 2023 presidential campaign for Bola Tinubu in the Northern part of Nigeria.
“Disregard the fake stories planted in some obscure online outfits that I’m appointed to coordinate the Presidential campaign of The Asiwaju in the North West,” Sani said in a Facebook post.
“I don’t coordinate anything for him or anyone.”
Sani, who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the 8th Nigerian Senate, said “the story is planted by some pusillanimous Political gnomes and Lucifers disseminated by their associated purveyors and sprinklers of lies.”
Tinubu, national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), is rumoured to be nursing an ambition to succeed current president Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
But the former Lagos State governor distanced himself from a presidential campaign support group with his name and image on its posters earlier this year.
“Bola Tinubu is not associated with this group whether in person or by proxy,” Tinubu tweeted in June.
Neither Tinubu or his party, APC, have made any comments on a successor plan for President Buhari.
But Buhari in early August said he will not name a preferred successor to replace him in 2023.
He said anyone interested in the position shouldcontest like he did in three previous elections.
“Succession, to me this is very funny,” Buhari said.
“Because if I did find anybody I will create more problems for him or her. Let those who want to be President try as much as I did.”
Sani, however, urged sponsors of the rumour not to use his name “to fight the Jagaban.”
He asked the sponsors of the rumour to “muster the courage to do so openly and not resort to peddling rudimentary mischief or use my name.”