Former Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has been told to discontinue the promotion of religious sentiments as the country prepares for the presidential election on February 25.
Chief of Staff (CoS) to Governor Simon Lalong, the Director-General, All Progressives Congress (APC), Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Mr. Yakubu Dati in a statement alleged that Dogara had been making futile attempts to drag the church into religious politics.
Dati in the statement claimed that Dogara, had a few days ago, invaded the extraordinary General Church Council (GCC) of the Evangelical Church Wining All (ECWA) to cause crisis by saying that the church would announce its preferred candidate for the presidential election.
“Many would have been misled into believing that ECWA is about to jettison the fine principles of objectivity and fairness, which it is known for, to line up behind Dogara’s partisanship and misconceived political choice.
“Rather than what Dogara caused to be reported, the Council held successfully and had deliberated on propagating the gospel of Christ with emphasises on soul winning and did not at any time make the endorsement of a presidential candidate for 2023 an issue.
“But because Dogara was at the venue for political gains and not for soul winning, he caused a statement to be issued to support his political bias and worst of all, attempted to brand the President of ECWA church, Dr Stephen Baba Panyam as sympathetic to his political sojourn.”
Dati insisted that Dogara’s precedence in the current political dispensation had been to attack either directly or indirectly other political parties on the basis of religion and to hoodwink unsuspecting organisations into believing he was fighting a religious cause.
He alleged that Dogara had lobbied to be made the running mate to the APC presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but it failed.
He purported that Dogara was always goaded by self-interest, but would not hesitate to abandon the ship when the situation did not favour him.
‘Dogara had also attempted to manipulate Northern Christians into believing he was fighting their cause until they found out that he was only fighting for his ambition of becoming vice president. While in APC, he aligned with presidential aspirants of other faiths against Christians aspirants that included Pastor Yemi Osinbajo, Rotimi Amaechi and others, but following his failed bid for vice presidency to Asiwaju, he resorted to religious blackmail,” he said.