By: Prof. Usman Yusuf
A free, fair, and credible election is what gives any democratic government legitimacy. The Presidential election of 25th February 2023 is widely considered as flawed thus dashing the legitimate expectations of millions of Nigerians that dared to hope that their votes would count. The results will surely be contested in Courts as they should.
At a time when Nigeria is going through the worst insecurity of our lifetime, mounting debt burden, citizens facing excruciating poverty with the scarcity of currency, and ethnoreligious agitations among others, our politicians are capitalizing on these fault lines to Balkanize the country for their selfish electoral gains.
This article raises an alarm on the national security implications of the Weaponization of religion in our politics especially leading up to the February 25th elections.
Chronology of Religion in Nigerian Politics
All Progressives Congress (APC)
2011: Pastor Tunde Bakare: After failing to win the presidential elections in 2003 and 2007 under the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), President Muhammadu Buhari started playing the religious card in 2011 by picking as his running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare, a Senior Pastor of the Citadel Global Community Church in Lagos.
2015-2023: Pastor Yemi Osinbajo: After the merger of the 4 parties that formed the APC in February 2013, Bola Ahmed Tinubu offered himself to be President Buhari’s running mate but was turned down because President Buhari was not comfortably leading a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu then nominated Prof. Yemi Osibanjo SAN who was his Attorney General when he was the Lagos state Governor (1999-2007) for the job. Prof. Osibanjo is a Pastor of the Redeem Christian Church of God, a factor meant to appeal to Christian voters.
2023: APC’S Muslim-Muslim Ticket: When Mr.Tinubu emerged as APC Presidential candidate, he defied the norm of religious balancing (Muslim-Christian) by choosing a fellow Muslim Sen. Kashim Shettima as his running mate. This angered particularly Northern Christians who felt excluded and unwanted in the Party.
I criticized this ticket in an article titled “APC’S Muslim-Muslim Ticket is neither for God nor Country” published in the Daily Trust Newspaper of 10th August 2022. I opined that our politics must reflect our diversity and that a same-faith ticket did not do that.
APC’S Muslim-Muslim Ticket: The Kaduna State Experience
Kaduna state has been bedeviled by the chronic ethnoreligious crisis that has defied solutions for almost 4 decades. In 2019, the Governor exacerbated the tenuous peace in the state by nominating a fellow Muslim as his running mate to the exclusion of Christians.
Four years hence, this same faith ticket has left citizens of the state more divided, less secure, angrier, and poorer, with more children out of school due to school fees hikes, thousands of workers retrenched and the state more indebted than ever before. Ironically, Muslims fared much worse with many of their Mosques demolished in the name of “urban renewal”.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
G5 Governors: After Atiku Abubakar’s emergence as the winner of the party’s Presidential primaries, 5 PDP Governors (G5) rebelled against the winner demanding for the resignation of the duly elected party chairman and power shift to the south of the country. In spite of all their claims to the contrary, they were seen by Northern Muslims as 5 Christian Governors ganging up against a legitimately elected Muslim candidate because of his faith.
Labour Party (LP)
Peter Obi capitalized on the sense of alienation among Igbos and discontent among Christians particularly in the North due to APC’S Muslim-Muslim ticket. In fact, in the North, Mr. Obi concentrated his campaign on Churches in states with a large population of Christians and Igbos.
New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP)
Pastor Isaac Idahosa: With a major presence only in the predominantly Muslim state of Kano, the NNPP wasn’t left behind in playing the religious card when its presidential candidate picked as his running mate, Pastor Isaac Idahosa, the general overseer of God First Ministry.
Islamic and Christian Clerics
Some Clerics of both faiths are equally complicit in fanning the embers of religious exclusion and intolerance during this election cycle. The sermons of some of these Clerics were outrightly provocative or unsettling to put it mildly.
“Islamization of Nigeria”
With the Muslim-Christian Ticket of President Buhari a Fulani Muslim and Vice President Osinbajo a Yoruba, Pastor, the prevailing narrative from the Christian South which was sold to the International Community by Christian organizations in Nigeria is that there is deliberate persecution of Christians and an agenda to Islamise Nigeria by the Buhari Administration.
I was confronted firsthand with this false narrative when I was privileged to represent His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III at the 2nd Annual International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington DC on June 28-30, 2022.
I published my experience at the Summit in the July 4th, 2022 edition of Daily Trust Newspaper in an article titled “Message from Washington DC”. I wondered aloud what new falsehood these purveyors of false narrative will sell to the World with a Muslim-Muslim leadership.
Gubernatorial Elections
Every citizen must be allowed to vote for a candidate of his choice without let or hindrance wherever he resides in the upcoming March 18th Gubernatorial elections. I have no doubt that in the North these rights will be protected. There are some concerning signals of ethnic tensions in Lagos that need to be doused before the elections. Likewise, in the South East and South-South, the rights of nonindigenes to vote freely must be protected.
The National Security Implications
Nigeria has never been more divided than it is today. This is largely due to the mismanagement of our ethnoreligious diversity by the outgoing APC government. Winning a flawed election is the easy part, but the big challenge will be holding together a fractured country.
Nigeria has survived regional and ethnic politics in its lifetime, what should worry every Nigerian is the recent Weaponization of religion in our politics. I shudder to think of a day when one will have to be looking over his shoulders because of the religion of his domestic staff, security, children’s teachers, coworkers, bosses, or subordinates. Religious fractures creeping into businesses, civil service, health, education, security services, and other spheres of our lives are real concerns that must be averted at all costs.
We cannot sit idle while reckless politicians push this country that many have given their lives for down the dangerous cliff of religious strife just for them to win elections.
The Presidential election of February 25th, 2023 is flawed in more ways than one with resultant serious negative national security implications. Millions of Nigerians now look up to the Judiciary to right this wrong and make their votes count. I call on all Nigerians to continue to remain patient and prayerful, in the words of Dr. King;
“The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.” – MLK
Usman Yusuf is a Professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation.
