…It’s Hard To Win, Playing Minority South, Minority North Game
Kalu
By Adamu Muhammad Dodo
Nigerian elites as politicians must be commended for their collective unity, aligning to peace building and mutual coexistence, kicking against hate speech, bias and faith-based propaganda propagation from the pulpit, before the congregation.
It is as metaphorical as philosophical to suggest that as former Vice President, the PDP presidential flag-bearer, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Waziri Adamawa, considers himself “a unifier”.
Recall the heated faith-based-hate speech, propelled propaganda propagation from the pulpit during the 2019 electioneering atmosphere that had almost divided the citizenry along ethnoreligious lines and regional dichotomy.
Suddenly the Waziri Adamawa emerged as a unifier he was and is; leaving the ruling party, the APC and the opposition party the PDP producing not only northern Muslims but also somehow related Fulani as presidential candidates; sending the propaganda propagation proposal to the coffin of ostracism.
This is to repeat itself in the 2023 electioneering atmosphere, still with the Waziri Adamawa playing the unifier, winning the PDP presidential ticket again while the northern governors, most of whom are Muslims supporting Bola Ahmed Tinibu’s presidential ambition.
Again Nigeria is experiencing the race led by Muslims in both the ruling and the major opposition parties against hate speech and “one-of-us-ness only” as a theology to evangelize.
Suddenly the question of faith based politics or representation is put to challenge from the pulpit. The politicians however, look beyond parochial sentiment. Their calculation lies only in winning elections. Let the faith based advocates form, register and package their political party; being not card carrying members, let to God what’s for God and to Caesar what’s for Caesar to good for political peace.
I remember contributing, condemning the religious intervention in political consideration as relates to the selection of Vice President by Tinibu or the APC where I said, “I wonder why people interfere into the political party affairs from the pulpit or any other public domain even though they aren’t card carrying members.
“As someone has observed, it isn’t any Hobson’s choice; there are other political parties in the race. Leave the APC with whoever is her choice to get the best, to have a rest.
Heaven does not fall with Kaduna joining Kano and other states playing the Muslim-Muslim ticket as much as the Christian-Christian ticket in Plateau and Benue states in the north. We shouldn’t be heating the polity, as a peace policy; let our votes count.
Sen Orji Uzor Kalu the Senate Chief Whip has without whipping sentiment keyed in the submission that Muslim-Muslim ticket is the only winning option for the All Progressive Congress, APC, with HE Bola Ahmed Tinibu as the party’s presidential flag-bearer.
Kalu said this while addressing the newsmen who sought his opinion on the way forward for Tinibu and the APC in the face of heated public debate on the choice and professed faith of the Vice President ahead of 2023 general elections.
Keying to the critical thinking, strategic planning group, Sen Kalu declared that it would be a welcome defeat playing two minorities; a southern minority and a northern minority against the northern majority and a southern majority.
Kalu would explain the obvious that the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinibu, with a wife as a senior pastor, is a minority Muslim from the south, he would only need a majority Muslim in the north to succeed.
“If I’m in Ahmed Tinibu’s situation – the wife is a senior pastor in a pentacostal church, they have been for over fifty something years together – I’d go Muslim-Muslim ticket. The most important thing is to win, Kalu said.
Other distinguished political personalities of majority southern extraction are agreed that for the power shift to the south, there is no obvious for the APC to play the southern minority and the northern majority; defining the Muslim-Muslim ticket, against the northern majority and the southern minority ticket.