By Victor Osula, Abuja
The decision by the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, to choose a Muslim like him as a Vice Presidential candidate is already generation heated debates across the country.
On Sunday evening Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, APC presidential candidate for the 2023 election, unveil former Borno State governor, Kashim as his running mate few hours after the “stand-by” VP, Ibrahim Masari wrote a letter of withdrawal in accordance with relevant sections of the Electoral Act 2022.
Prior to Sunday’s announcement of the Muslim –Muslim leaders across religious divide in the country had urged, if not warned the governing party’s candidate to reject the suggestion, stating that the Nigeria of today needed more care and thoughtfulness in making such vital decisions as choosing a VP on religious grounds.
The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN and the Christian Youth Movement of Nigeria as well as Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, called on all the political parties to respect the religious balance for fairness and justice in the country. Their calls were made against the backdrop on the polarizing influence religion and ethnicity has become in the country following the nepotistic policies of the current administration and the terrorism unleashed on the country by the Islamic State for West Africa, ISWAP, Boko Haram and Ansaru seeking to overrun the country and make it an Islamic republic. They said choosing a Muslim-Christian ticket has been the norm since the return to civil rule in 1999, as a way of balancing the religious divide in the country.
Whether they would succeed is anybody’s guess. But developments in the country show that they have had the upper hand against the armed forces in the country, slowly at first when they confined their activities to Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states in the Northeast since 2009 and had been spreading their tentacles rapidly since 2020 when states like Niger in the North Central, Zamfara and Katsina in the Northwest fell under their hold and fire power. Shettima was governor in Borno when Boko Haram kidnapped Chibok girls in April 2014, some of whom have been released and more still in captivity.
In these enclaves, terrorists levy the communities, rape their women, commandeer their foodstuffs at will.
Kaduna has become a killing field with no less than 20 to 30 people being maimed, killed and kidnapped for ransom, almost on a daily basis mostly in Southern Kaduna, populated by Christians. The recent killings of 50 persons at St Francis Church in Owo, Ondo State, killings of over 38 in a mine in Shiroro, Niger State, with half of them soldiers; kidnap of the Prelate of Methodist Church who had to pay N100 million ransom to secure his freedom and waves of kidnap of priests in Benue, Edo, Plateau and Kaduna has deepened the religious dimension to the designs of the terrorist, spreading fear and anger across the land.
It is against background of this religious inferno that Tinubu’s choice is being considered a dangerous gamble, uncaring and insensitivity by those opposed to the choice.
It also gives an indication of how he has been captured by powerful forces that would call the shots if he were to be president. The fact that it took that long to unveil his VP, almost a month and half after the convention where he emerged victorious as APC presidential candidate also points to fact that powerful forces were at play with one eventually gaining the upper hand in his choice.
That long delay added the religious tenor tried had to explain away in his address that his choice of Shettima was influenced by competence, leadership, qualities that are evenly distributed among all religions and ethnic nationalities in Nigeria and in this case the North.
Moreover, in 2015, the same Tinubu chose current VP Yemi Osinbajo, a Christian as a running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari to balance the religious divide in the country. So what make him think that 2022 is different? What has changed? Clearly, there is a way the Muslim-Muslim choice can be seen as the policy APC because it is the governing party. This would further fuel the accusation of nepotism and bigotry.
Here Tinubu in a statement explaining his choice. Tinubu, who supported a Christian –Muslim ticket of his party in 2015 on Sunday invoked the June 12, 1993 Muslim-Muslim presidential candidacy of Chief Moshood Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe, thusly:
“In 1993, Nigerians embraced Chief MKO Abiola and a fellow Muslim running mate, Baba Gana Kingibe in one of the fairest elections ever held. The spirit of 1993 is upon us in 2023.”
Here him again when he also sounded political in another part of the speech that, “religion, ethnicity and region cannot always fully determine our part. To forge ahead as a nation toward development and prosperity, we must break free from old binds, we must break.”
In any case, how did the June 12, 1993 ticket end?
But for reasons already enumerated above, Nigeria in 2022 is a far cry from the sanity, brotherhood and harmony that reigned in the country of 1993. Secondly Abiola never said as Tinubu did in that his famous speech before the APC convention that it was the turn of the Yorubas and that Yoruba means Tinubu. Politics, politics and politics?
In his reaction, Lagos based human rights lawyer, Ebun Adegboruwa, SAN, said Muslim Muslim ticket is an insensitive choice.
According to him, “It is a terrible choice in a in one million ways. A Muslim-Muslim ticket in present day Nigeria is fuel for Boko Haram, incentive for ISWAP and a call for more terrorists, unless those parading the ticket are themselves complicit. There is no better way to insult our sensibilities.”
Earlier before the announcement, an APC chieftain and lawyer, Bwala had warned his party against the choice. He said the decision flies in the face of fairness, justice and equity considering the diversity of the country and the Constitutional provision of Federal Character, which canvasses fair representation in the choice of appointees and election for key offices in the land.
For Former Governor Rashidi Ladoja, there is nothing wrong with a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
He said, waxing philosophical; “I do not see anything wrong in Muslim-Muslim ticket. Muslims and Christians are from the same father. Abraham is known as Ibrahim in Islam.”
Then he embraces reality, saying, “if not for the crisis and killings in the country, they (Nigerians) usually don’t think about the kind of religion anyone was practicing. It is usually politicians that usually cause crisis with religion; they are the causes of all these things, but God will intervene. When gunmen started attacking churches and kidnapping clerics in Christendom, people started doubting their fellow brothers who belong to another religion.”
Expectedly, immediate successor to Hashim as governor of Borno State, Prof Zulum us elated by the choice. He said Shettima’s choice was the wisest decision ever made by the party:
“Without the slightest doubt, HE Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has chosen a leader who deeply understands our country and its complexities. There is hardly any tribe in any of Nigeria’s 36 states and the FCT that Senator Kashim Shettima cannot knowledgeably speak about. He knows the social, cultural, religious, economic and political structure of virtually all 36 States and the FCT.
“Shettima is extremely patriotic. He believes so much in the unity of this country and he has proved it on a number of occasions.”
