Christians must stop restricting themselves to the four walls they erroneously call the Church. There is nothing in their Bible that forbids their participation in politics.
I didn’t get to read the Daily Trust newspaper’s story where 1000 Islamic clerics were said to have called on Muslims not to vote for President Bola Tinubu when the election comes up in January 2027. But I read it in Lasisi Olagunju’s column in Saturday Tribune which he edits. Their grouse is his policies, which they say have pauperized the north. They are careful in the choice of the place to make their call. Kano, the fiery city of the north, a city of the Hausas which the Fulani overlords have strategically cornered, is their choice. The Hausas are fighting to repossess their city and they look like succeeding. The city is known for its fiery character and has become notorious for the start of many northern upheavals. Bola Tinubu experienced one such riot.
These clerics know that Nigeria, over which Bola Tinubu presides as president, is not just a Muslim country, they know there are equally strong numbers of Christians and animists in the country. They also know that the policies which President Bola Tinubu and his acolytes call reforms do not carry a Christian label but equally affect all citizens of the country. But they choose to speak only for the Muslims.
Here, they openly declare their intention. And they are very brazen about it. They want Nigeria divided along religious fault lines. A friend I shared the Lasisi Olagunju column with invited my attention to the fact that all the names mentioned by Lasisi Olagunju as participants in the meeting are Fulani names, meaning that it is a Fulani tribal strategy.
This won’t be new to Nigerians in the south, but the ones in the north might pretend newness. Who is behind the move? It can be nobody other than Atiku Abubakar, the man who wants to be president of Nigeria by all means. With this strategy, Atiku does not mind bringing the nation down. Atiku has become a serial presidential contender having contested now for about seven times without winning once. When Olusegun Obasanjo won in 1999, Atiku won beside him as the running mate.
But he blundered his opportunity to succeed his principal as president by his well known character. Obasanjo accused him of bribing Ghali Na’aba, now late, who was speaker of the House of Representatives, to impeach the sitting president. Atiku has consistently denied this, but Nigerians cannot be fooled. Atiku has a way of using bribes to get his way through anything. Obasanjo has said this openly. This author heard very reliably from politicians in Oyo state that Atiku gave Seyi Makinde the state governor $5 million so that his candidate will clinch the chairmanship of PDP so that Atiku may succeed in his plan to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate.
The scheme failed as Atiku and Seyi Makinde fell out because Atiku wanted both the presidency and control of the PDP. Seyi Makinde teamed up with Nyesom Wike, then fiery governor of River State and used the PDP to enthrone Bola Tinubu as president. Here we are in another election cycle, Atiku, now 79, still wants to be president. He is back at his schemes.
Why do we think Atiku is behind the current call by the Fulani clerics who masquerade as northern Muslim clerics? Atiku is Fulani. He is said to be broke, having spent so much money in the past seven election runs. Observers think he wants to recoup his money. An Ibadan-based politician told this writer: “once Atiku steps into Dubai, we know the money will soon come.” He wants him to participate because that will mean money and appointments for those of them who support him. Of the 2023 largesse which Atiku took to Ibadan, the share of this politician was twenty-five million naira. If Atiku can give, as Obasanjo alleges, $5 million to bribe Ghali Na’aba to impeach Obasanjo, the man who preferred him as Vice President even when their party had another candidate, there is nothing conceivable or inconceivable he cannot do to accomplish his ambition. He will not think about the health of the nation or the progress of the party he works through.
But those of us in Nigeria who prefer a united Nigeria must warn Atiku and his Muslim clerics that their attempts to inflame religious passions will not benefit them or Nigeria. I’m one that always argues for a united Nigeria because of the dangers of allowing the nation to go up in flames especially by religion and the benefits of a large and culturally diverse nation. It will take forever to war if we allow the nation to slip into war. Now, if the Muslim clerics acting out their masters script wants it, those of us on the other side of the divide may just as well sign onto it also.
We must warn the north cannot continue to hold this nation at the jugular. The nation has been held down by the religious preferences of the north since independence in 1960. Efforts by Chief Obafemi Awolowo to provide the north western education were rebuffed by the oligarchists in that part of the nation. They did everything to shield the people of the north from seeing the goodies this man did in the southwest and promised to do in the north. This disdain for education is the principal reason for the multidimensional poverty in the north which the disguised Atiku clerics are now complaining of.
Northern oligarchy will rather prefer to sponsor people on a pilgrimage to Mecca than send them to school. They would rather encourage mass marriage for people who have no skills. If a man has no money to marry a wife, how can he have money to sustain the wife and to raise the children? Yet these feudalists in the north will blame southern leaders who are trying to modernize the economy for making their people poor. Yet the money used to execute all the foolish agendas in the north is sourced mostly from the south. There are mineral resources in the north but they would rather be stolen by foreigners in collaboration with the religious and hypocritical feudalists.
Both the north and the south are grovelling under the economic policies of President Bola Tinubu. The Yoruba, in their egalitarianism, because of western education, are the fiercest critics of President Bola Tinubu, even though he is one of them, not because they are excluded from the pains of the policies, but because they will still give him some breather because they know that President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani from the north, practically ruined the nation. During the Buhari era, the north went comatose and said nothing despite the fact that Buhari was taking the nation down the drain. I do not trust the praises of the Breton-wood institutions on Nigeria’s economy because any statistics that do not reflect the real lives of the citizens must be regarded as propaganda. But so it was in the time of the northern scion, military president, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, who in his so-called Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) caused great poverty in the nation. Yet the mouthy northerner had nothing but praise for the gap-toothed general. The south is getting by because of their western education; they are able to migrate to nations abroad where they easily get jobs and the ones who remain are enduring hope as the government continues to tell them that the nation will soon be out of the woods.
The north, especially the Muslims, must stop threatening other parts of the nation. If it wants to go, it can. The nation must be one of equals. Atiku Abubakar must be warned not to pull the country down in his ambition. If he wants to be president, Nigeria must first be one and in existence and he must take steps to reform his character. Nigeria needs men and women of character who will not steal the nation dry but give the nation good governance. Christians must stop restricting themselves to the four walls they erroneously call the Church. There is nothing in their Bible that forbids their participation in politics. They must as their Bible commands let their light shine in politics and economics and all spheres. They must be prepared to give these so-called northern clerics a run for their money if they won’t stop threatening the nation with religious conflagration.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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