President Bola Tinubu has ended months of speculation by formally retaining Vice President Kashim Shettima as his running mate for 2027, as the APC submitted its nomination forms to the party’s NWC for transmission to INEC.
The development, confirmed at a ceremony in Abuja on Friday, draws a line under weeks of intense political horse-trading within the APC over the vice-presidential slot speculation that had, at various points, floated the names of former House Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Secretary to the Government of the Federation George Akume as possible replacements for the former Borno State governor.
Tinubu’s special adviser on political matters, Ibrahim Masari, stood in for the president at the submission, presenting the joint nomination forms duly completed, signed, and accompanied by affidavits on behalf of both principals.
Masari told the gathering he was there on the president’s behalf to submit the nomination forms, duly completed and signed, together with the affidavit for the president and vice president.
Speaking for the party’s governors, Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, who chairs the Progressive Governors’ Forum, struck a note of unqualified endorsement. He said the governors were pleased with the president’s stewardship of the country’s affairs and pledged continued support to take the nation to greater heights.
The governors, he added, were ready to face the 2027 campaigns head-on and deliver victory for the party’s full slate of candidates.
APC National Chairman Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda struck an equally bullish tone, insisting the president was already headed for a second term. He told the ceremony that the president was going into the race with a bloc of over 12 million votes drawn from party members.
Yilwatda urged party leaders to intensify grassroots publicity around the administration’s achievements, citing programs such as the student loan scheme, which he said had benefited over 1.5 million students, alongside road projects and fertilizer support for farmers in states including Borno and Niger.
The submission comes as INEC tightens the screws on its candidate nomination timetable. The commission had fixed 6:00 p.m. on July 11 as the closing date for parties to submit Forms EC9 and other nomination documents through its online portal.
APC insiders told reporters in the days leading up to Friday’s event that party officials were working “round the clock” to beat the deadline, having already uploaded the particulars of governors and senatorial candidates from Kwara, Imo, and Yobe states.
Shettima’s retention had, in truth, been trailed for weeks. Days earlier, the Vice President himself had personally submitted Tinubu’s APC nomination and expression-of-interest forms at the Shettima Hall of the Bola Tinubu International Conference Centre, a gesture widely read within party circles as a signal that the Tinubu-Shettima ticket remained intact, whatever the undercurrents.
Those undercurrents were real enough. Reports had persisted of friction between camps loyal to the president and those aligned with the vice president, culminating in a chaotic APC North-East stakeholders’ meeting in Gombe State, where supporters of Shettima allegedly clashed with a zonal party official after the gathering did not refer to the vice president at all.
Ahead of the 2023 election, in June 2022, Tinubu had submitted the name of Ibrahim Masari as a placeholder vice-presidential candidate to INEC, a tactical maneuver that allowed the APC to meet strict nomination deadlines while the president-elect continued consultations. Masari stepped aside the following month, clearing the way for Shettima’s nomination as a strategic play for northern support.
Tinubu secured the APC’s 2027 ticket outright following the party’s May 23 primary, defeating his sole challenger, Stanley Osifo, by a landslide margin of nearly 11 million votes.
His choice of running mate, however, remained an open question for weeks afterward, with the president, notably, among the last of the major presidential contenders to settle the matter, alongside the PDP’s Sandy Onor.
With Friday’s submission and Friday night’s upload to the INEC portal completed ahead of Saturday’s deadline, the APC has now formally closed that chapter, setting the stage for what promises to be a fiercely contested 2027 general election against opposition tickets that include Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso for the ADC-aligned NDC coalition and Atiku Abubakar paired with Rotimi Amaechi.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
After months of speculation and internal APC friction over possibly replacing him, Kashim Shettima remains Bola Tinubu’s running mate for 2027. The ticket was formally submitted to INEC on July 10, just ahead of the July 11 nomination deadline, signaling that the Tinubu-Shettima partnership stays intact for the president’s re-election bid.
