Were bishops and religious leaders who attended APC VP unveiling event hired?

It has been a fun time in the Nigerian political atmosphere. A lot of permutations, calculations, moves, campaigns, jabs, and manipulations from political parties and political gladiators for the sake of winning the 2023 presidential elections.

On Wednesday, the 20th of July was the official unveiling of His Excellency Kashim Shettima, the former governor of Borno state as the running mate and Vice Presidential aspirant of the APC presidential flag bearer, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Due to the fact that both the presidential candidate is a Muslim and the proposed Vice President is also a Muslim this Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket has received a lot of opposition mostly from the Christain group as Christain religious leaders called on their religious followers to boycott the party and have nothing to do with the party and never to vote for the APC in the upcoming election.

The conspiracy theorists even tagged this move of the Muslim-Muslim ticket as a ploy to Islamize Nigeria and force Christians and other religious groups to become Muslims. 

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the umbrella body for Christians in Nigeria did not fail to openly kick against this choice of a Muslim-Muslim ticket and was vocal about their opposition against the ruling decision of the ruling All Progressives Congress for the 2023 election.

For this reason, the Christian community decided to boycott the ruling party and don’t want to be associated with the party in any form and made it known that they won’t be at the official unveiling ceremony of the Vice President.

All Progressive Congress being a political manipulator they are known for decided to hire mercenaries and impostors to attend the ceremony in other for it to appear that some Christain religious leaders supported the Muslim-Muslim ticket and to counter the initial stand of the leadership of the Christain Association of Nigeria (CAN) that no Christain leader will support this move of theirs and to also give Christian voters a false impression that Bola Tinubu’s decision to pick a Muslim northerner as his running-mate for the 2023 general election meant well for the country despite strong criticism from the Christian community and opinion leaders in the country.

The calculation and move of hiring mercenaries and impostors to appear as bishops and religious leaders failed woefully when the pictures of the so-called Bishops and Christain leaders started circulating online and some people were able to identify the Impostors claiming to be church leaders; one of the “bishops” was identified as a mechanic by his boss, one was as well identified as a street urchin and the whole plan met its Waterloo when some of the rented Bishops started protesting that the money they were paid to dress like Bishops and attend the ceremony was not the amount they were initially promised when they were contracted to do the job.

One of the imposters, who identified himself to Peoples Gazette as Joseph Odaudu, said Bola Tinubu’s representatives that contracted them initially promised to pay them N100,00 for the job only for the fee to be slashed by 60% once they have done the job.

“They came to meet us at the car park behind Eagle Square and they promised to give me N100,000. They bought food for us and took us to another place where they gave us clothes to dress like Christian leaders and reverend fathers,” Mr. Odaudu told The Gazette shortly after the event in Abuja on Wednesday. “But after we finished they only gave me N40,000 and another person said they got only N30,000. I don’t know why they changed our agreement because they said they had N100,000 for us”.

This is to show the desperation and the extent the ruling party can go in their games and manipulations in order to win the 2023 election. We can all sit and enjoy the drama as the events keep unfolding.