JUST recently President Muhammadu Buhari spoke again from the heart on the unity of the Nigerian nation. It is therefore imperative to urge him to go one more step in the timely sermon and condemn the adoption of a Muslim-Muslim ticket by his party for it is a direct assault on the notion of Nigeria’s oneness and togetherness.
There is no overriding logic or sufficient amount of rhetoric, political swag or bullying that can justify the adoption of a same faith presidential ticket in Nigeria today. And since it is the ruling party that is leading this potential path of destruction, the President of the Federal Republic and Commander in Chief of its Armed Forces is the one to stop it.
For the sake of national unity and fairness, it is high time that President Buhari called his party, the APC and the party’s presidential candidate to order. Not just by his famed body language, but by decisive words and action. Anyone not given to the fraud that the idea of a same faith ticket is, nor fooled by the selfishness of the inanity would easily understand why it is untenable.
Despite the unfair criticism of an Islamic agenda that he faced during most of his first term in office, President Buhari is indeed a fair-minded leader with a heart for a united country. Going by his antecedents, he has shown that he is an honest, and transparent leader who is not divisive, at least in how he managed the issue of a balanced presidential ticket on five occasions.
All the times he contested in the presidential elections, Buhari showed that he is an inclusive leader. Being a Northern Muslim, he always picked a southern christians as running mates.
In 2003, on the platform of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), he chose a former Senate President, the late Chuba Okadigbo as his running mate. Four years later, he accepted Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, a Christian from the same geo-political zone as Okadigbo, as running mate.
Again, in 2011, when he lost to the late Umaru Yar ‘Adua, President Buhari picked a Christian and pastor, Tunde Bakare from the South-West as his running mate. In 2015, when he won the elections against Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari’s choice of Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), as vice presidential candidate not only calmed frayed nerves, it proved again that Buhari was a principled leader, who remained firm on his conviction for fairness, balance and competence in the presidency. It was arguably one of the many jokers for the APC to coast home to victory at the presidential polls both in 2015 and 2019.
The last and only time any political party fielded a presidential and vice-presidential candidate of the same faith/religion in a democratic dispensation was 30 years ago, precisely the June 12, 1993 presidential elections, which was won by the late philanthropist Chief M.K.O Abiola.
There’s a lot of history behind this. Nigerians were tired of decades of military dictatorship and were also fed up with the shenanigans of the then military Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, who kept proscribing political parties and cancelling democratic procedures as he deemed fit as he wished.
But things are very much different now. Nigeria has since enjoyed 23 years of unbroken democracy since 1999. Then, Abiola as the presidential flagbearer of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1993 was also a much loved and revered politician by all sections of the country. His choice of Babagana Kingibe, a fellow Muslim, as his running mate in 1993, was welcomed by both Christians and Muslims across the six geopolitical zones.
This was so because the country was not as divided and polarized along political, ethnic and religious lines as it is today regrettably. This fears may exacerbate with the insensitive decision of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Muslim-Muslim ticket and its presidential flagbearer Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to pick a fellow Muslim: former governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, as his running mate.
While the same religion ticket may not be legally wrong, but it’s morally wrong at a time like this in a multi-ethnic and religiously diverse society like Nigeria, which is also grappling with major security challenges in every region.
According to a 2018 estimate in the World Factbook by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Nigeria’s Christian-Muslim population is evenly split. Simply put, Tinubu and the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket is shamelessly calling the bluff of about half the Nigerian population who are Christians both in the Southern and Northern parts of the country.
With this figure, it is safe to assume that the ruling party risks losing the 2023 presidential elections on the back of this thorny issue, especially as the candidates of main opposition party, PDP and the Labour Party, among others, have picked running mates from different religion.
Indeed Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria clearly stated the need to promote fairness, equity & national unity in composition of the federal government. A Muslim-Muslim ticket goes against this spirit.
There is no moral or constitutional justification for a Muslim-Muslim ticket, not by the ruling APC or any other political party for that matter.
A Muslim-Muslim ticket also does not support the President’s vision for national unity, fairness and tolerance across religious, political and ethnic lines. That the President has been silent or aloof on the matter does not speak well for him and triggers more questions than answers about his place in Nigeria’s history.
President Buhari should realise that the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket would be a big eternal stain on his legacy should he leave office without clearly and sternly addressing this issue with Tinubu and his party.
Nigerians would remember that he failed to speak up against the same religion ticket of his party, even though he had stood against it when his personal prospects were at stake. It is no longer President Buhari’s personal prospects that are at stake, it’s the prospects for a unity nation that are being endangered. Should the President not stand up to be counted on the side of doing everything humanely possible to preserve our unity as one nation under God?
As has been already exposed the competence argument for picking a Muslim running mate for a Muslim candidate holds no water. It is inconceivable that Tinubu and his camp wants Nigerians to believe that they could not find any credible Christian politician from the North as his vice-presidential candidate.
What this attempts to achieve, even if unwittingly is the degradation of Christians into second class citizens in their own country. If we as a people sit-by and allow political expediency to prevail, and our president refuses to act, then we have only succeeded in promoting a faultline to a real and present danger of a new apartheid based on religion.
Why should one man’s political desperation be allowed to trigger grave consequences that would explode into everyone’s face sooner or later?. For the sake of the future of over 200 million Nigerians, the country’s unity must not be sacrificed on the altar of Tinubu’s lifetime ambition and APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket. Mr. President, the time to act, is now.
- Mr Ogah Columba wrote in from Abuja
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