Abdussamad Umar Jibia
Sometime in 2023, after the APC presidential primaries, I wrote to advise the flag-bearer of APC, Alhaji Bola Ahmad Tinubu on the need to appoint a Muslim as his running mate. The reason I gave is still valid. Northern Christians (read opportunists) are a tiny minority compared to their Muslim counterparts. In addition, they are known to unleash violence against Muslims in the few areas they form majority. Any presidential ticket with a Northern Christian on it was thus dead on arrival.
Taking Nigeria as a whole, Christians are fewer than Muslims. A Muslim-Muslim ticket is thus a winning ticket. A Christian-Christian ticket will always lose. If it could win, Nigerian Christians would never allow us access even the most insignificant positions in Government.
But even as we were talking about Islam and Christianity, we ignored a statement credited to former President Olusegun Obasanjo that to the Yoruba man, Yoruba culture is more important than religion. We also ignored notes from other Muslims that Tinubu was married to a pastor who had an excessive influence on him. Whereas going by the teaching of Islam, Bola Ahmed, a Muslim male did nothing wrong by marrying a Christian woman, the excessive influence of his wife had not been established. Hence, we ignored those notes.
Now, with a Muslim as the head and another Muslim as his deputy what are the expectations?
Since democracy is a game of numbers in which majority have the way, it is highly unexpected that a Government that came to power with votes of the majority will be populated by minority. That is what President Tinubu has done. Only yesterday I read a story of how Tinubu, a Muslim who came to power with the votes of Muslim majority, was to travel to Vatican “with a bragging right of 62% Christian appointees”. This figure was shamelessly released by the Presidency according to the Thisday newspaper.
The presidential entourage itself is Christian. There is no single Muslim name in it except the President himself. If I may ask, is the president still a Muslim? Is he practicing double religion? Islam doesn’t allow the practice of two religions by a person. You are either a Muslim or something else. Is President Tinubu going there to worship? Of course, Vatican is a Catholic city with no single Muslim. Why can’t he send the Senate president if at all Nigeria has to honour the “Pope’s invitation”?
But appointment to public offices is only secondary. What is fundamental is the right of every Nigerian Muslim to practice their religion without let or hindrance and without another religion being imposed on them. A Muslim-Muslim presidency is useless if it cannot remove, or at worst attempt to remove, the aspects of Christianity imposed on non-Christian Nigerians in our national life. Only a few weeks ago, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) protested closure of schools by some Northern states during Ramadan, claiming an attempt to “Islamize” the country. Instead of Tinubu/Shettima Government to seize the opportunity to conduct a total review of influence of the colonial Christian religion in our national life, this Government, like some cowards, succumbed to CAN’s position and asked the Federal Ministry of Education to “discuss” with the Muslim states that closed schools.
A simple review of our working and work-free days would reveal that we are being forced to observe Christian holy days of Saturdays and Sundays as weekends, a total of 104 days per year. Again, our schools close twice a year for Christmas and Easter Christian celebrations. Yet, the Muslim-Muslim Government is not even looking into that direction. Is it timidity or deception? Either way, the disappointment is stinking.
Out of laughable ignorance, Nigerian Christians consider Israel as a Christian country and Israelis as their brothers. Yes, the same jews who proudly claim the murder of Jesus and consider his mother a whore. This ignorance is what led Pastor Adeboye to pray for Israel against the occupied Palestine. At the point the entire freedom-fighting nations like our own South Africa was filing a petition at the International Criminal Court, we saw the President’s wife receiving the Israeli ambassador at the state house.
Assuming the land and blood of Gazans were lawful for Israel, which is what Mrs. Tinubu seems to believe, what of the valid claim that Israel has a hand in the failure of our internal security by giving military training to Christian militia in the North Central? Why can’t President Tinubu launch an honest investigation into it?
Mr. President, have we not made the wrong choice?
On a final note, I still believe that it could have been worse if Tinubu had chosen a Northern Christian as his running mate. Of course, he would have lost the presidential election.
Professor Abdussamad Umar Jibia
18/05/2025
