By Fred Itua, Abuja
Last week’s emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), may have been concluded but in its trail, there are still issues the ruling party has to successfully deal with ahead of 2023 general election. While Tinubu and his many foot soldiers still bask in the euphoria of his victory, losers are still nursing their wounds.
Tinubu’s victory, though seen as triumph by his supporters over imposition, political pundits see it as the dearth of party supremacy.
Their argument is hinged on a number of obvious factors. For them, if governors at the state levels are allowed to singlehandedly pick their successors, why won’t the president pick his own successor at the national level?
Beyond the unending argument over party supremacy, the thrust of the issue since the emergence of Tinubu as the presidential candidate of APC, is the choice of his running mate. With last week’s announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), that political parties must submit names of presidential running mates this week, the ruling APC and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), must follow suit immediately.
While the choice of the PDP is easy to discern, that of the APC, many believe, may make or mar the party. Barring any last minute change, the ruling APC is expected to brace the odds and announce a Muslim/Muslim ticket. If the party ignores outcries from stakeholders and settles for the option, it will be the first time since 1999, that a major political party, will damn the religious sensitivity of a plural country like Nigeria and deliberately opt for what critics have termed an “unpopular decision.”
Though Tinubu’s men are quick to allude their planned decision to the 1993 emergence of Moshood Abiola and Babagana Kingibe, both Muslims as presidential candidate and running mate respectively, critics who are students of history, are warning of a repeat of the aftermath of the election.
Former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, last year, gave a faint insight into one of the reasons why the June 12, 1993 presidential election was annulled. He said some top officials in the military would have staged a violent coup if he did not annul the election.
Critics say Babaginga’s decision was primarily based on the abuse of religious diversity by Abiola, in the choice of his running mate, who was a Muslim like him from the North.
“If it materialised, there would’ve been a coup d’état which could have been violent. That’s all I can confirm,” Babangida had said.
“It didn’t happen thanks to the engineering and the ‘Maradonic’ way we handled you guys in the society with a tinge of disdain. But that could’ve given room for more instability in the country,” he had added.
Ahead of Tinubu’s emergence last week, APC Northern governors, met with him in Abuja, where those privy to the meeting, said promises were made. A source familiar with the meeting, said the governors had insisted that if Tinubu was elected, his running mate will be one of them (governor).
The source revealed the last-minute conspiracy and turning of the tide against President Muhammadu Buhari, who had technically endorsed Ahmad Lawan as the consensus candidate of the ruling APC.
The source said Tinubu agreed to the terms, but was silent on the religious implication of his planned action to pick a Muslim as a running mate. According to the source, President Buhari and other key stakeholders of the party, are opposed to the idea.
But governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, who in 2018, ignored the Christian community in Kaduna State to run on a Muslim/Muslim ticket, has come out to defend the planned decision of Tinubu to pick a Muslim as a running mate.
Mallam el-Rufai, who has been repeatedly accused of religious insensitivity by his critics, struggled to argue that religion should not be a factor in the choice of Tinubu’s running mate. According to him, competence should be the guiding principle.
He said: “I don’t look at people from the lens of Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian, some of my closest friends are Christians.
“It was Pastor Tunde Bakare, a Pentecostal pastor, who took me to CPC, not President Muhammadu Buhari. I’m very close to Pastor Bakare. I’m very close to many Christians.
“I don’t think the business of governance has to do with religion. I think we should look for the best person for the job; the person who will get the job done.
“I’m the wrong person to ask that question because in my state, I picked a very competent and qualified woman as my running mate in the 2019 elections.
“But just because she happens to be a Muslim, people were calling it Muslim-Muslim ticket and they said we are going to lose. We didn’t. We won overwhelmingly.
“This fixation of Nigerians with religion instead of competence, capacity and capability is quite sad and pathetic and I urge you as the media to take religion out of governance and let’s look for capacity, competence and delivery.
“I don’t think we should be looking at religion. We want to develop this country. When I get into a plane, I don’t ask about the religion of the pilot. When I go to the hospital, I don’t ask about the religion of the doctor. I just want to get well and get to my destination even on an aircraft.
“Nigeria is at crossroads. We face very serious dangers in security, economic meltdown, and global issues affecting us. All that people are concerned with as far as who will be president and vice-president, is religion.
“It is not our religion that will solve our problems. It is people who are competent, capable that will address Nigeria’s problems, unite the country and put it on a progressive path.”
Contrary to el-Rufai’s claim, his decision to pick a Muslim as a running mate in Kaduna in 2018, was rejected by Islamic leaders.
Popular Kaduna-based Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, had argued that going by the culture and environment of Kaduna State, the state is not ripe for a Muslim-Muslim governorship ticket in 2018.
He had said that such a ticket could create more tension in the violence-prone state, and that people of other ethnic groups and religions should be assimilated and not pushed out.
At the national level, APC’s plan is being opposed by members of the party and the religious community. A former Secretary to the government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, has warned that picking a Muslim as running mate to Tinubu, who is also a Muslim, will be dangerous.
Lawal pointed out that Nigerians are still conscious of ethno-religious factors in politics. According to him, Tinubu would have been running mate to Buhari, when the latter became the candidate of the APC in 2014, but for the discouragement of a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Lawal said: “A political party is in the business of winning elections and to win elections you need to get the votes to beat your opponents. The way I see it is that in choosing your vice-president, that must be paramount in your mind. You can have the best ticket but if you don’t win elections, it is a waste of time.
“So, whatever candidate we are going to choose, we will bear in mind that that vice-president will contribute to winning that election. How does he (or she) continue? It is either he (or she) is popular and can bring in the votes or he (or she) can bring the money that will help our logistics in getting out the votes, so we can win the elections.
“But then, there is also the requirement that you want to run a united country; you want to run a country where you don’t have friction in the society – peaceful, settled and everybody goes about their business.
“It is not a requirement in the Constitution that it has to shift. There is no zoning. But it is so we can have a country that is united; that everybody can go about their business in a peaceful environment.
“It could have been possible for a northern (presidential) candidate to emerge. But then, you would know that running the country in that manner would have the southern part of Nigeria (to be) hostile to that government. So, we allowed it to shift.
“Now, extending that consideration to the Muslim-Muslim ticket, I have lived among the Christians and I know that among the Christians, the question of a Muslim-Muslim ticket is a no-go area. It is dead on arrival. Buhari himself, even at that time, had to drop this present presidential candidate (Tinubu) because of the tension of a Muslim-Muslim ticket. And we have not seen anything in the country that has changed significantly to allow that to happen.
“On the contrary, it has worsened. The religious divide has increased. Tribal divisions have increased. Regional divisions have increased. So, it would be a good thing if APC would settle for a Muslim-Christian ticket.”
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), has also issued a stern warning to the APC, to jettison its plan of picking a Muslim as running mate to Tinubu.
Pastor Bayo Oladeji, media aide to CAN President in a chat with Daily Sun, recalled that CAN had issued a statement long ago, warning political parties against choosing candidates of the same religion, insisting that their position has not changed and won’t change.
He said: “Let’s state it clearly again that Muslim/Muslim or Christian/Christian ticket for the 2023 general elections particularly the presidential election is not acceptable to us.
“Muslim President (Buhari) and Christian Vice (Osinbajo) have been in power in the past seven years and we know the level of verbal and physical persecution and attacks Christians have faced in Nigeria, not to talk of Muslim/Muslim ticket as being rumoured.
“Our God frustrated APC’s plans to present Muslim/Muslim ticket in 2015. That divine frustration will visit them again and any political party with similar agenda this period, in addition to legal actions and other things, we would take to stop that ‘devilish’ plans.
“There’s no religion that doesn’t have people that would man critical positions in Nigeria. Why then choose from same religion when there are different religions in Nigeria? That won’t be acceptable to CAN and we will work, legally and otherwise, to frustrate the plans.”
CAN’s national secretary, Joseph Bade Dara-mola, in a statement too, recommended that a balance of both faith practitioners be considered in the choice of presidential contenders’ run¬ning mates.
It reads: “We congratulate the presidential candidates of the ruling All Progres¬sives Congress (APC), the op¬position Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the Labour Party (LP): Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and Mr. Peter Obi, as well as other parties contesting the upcoming pres-idential election.
“We do not subscribe to Christian/Christian ticket or Muslim/Muslim ticket. Politi¬cians can talk politics but we have stated our views long be¬fore now. Any party that tries same religion ticket will fail. This is not 1993.”
The statement further reads in parts: “Even when we have joint Muslim/Christian ticket, the church still goes through hell. Only God knows the number of Christians that have been killed in the last seven years with no one apprehended or prosecuted.
“Imagine how bad it will be if we have two Muslims in power? The extant Nige¬rian Constitution promotes religious balance. So, if any political party wants to try Muslim/Muslim ticket, it’s at its own peril. CAN is only forewarning but will make a categorical statement in the event our warning is not heeded.
“The Presidential running mate for the APC presidential flag bearer, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu should be a Chris¬tian from the North, Atiku’s running mate should be a Christian from the South while Obi should choose his own among the Muslims from the North.
“Anything contrary to the above means that the leadership of these political parties do not bother about the unity of this entity called Nigeria. Those who are plan¬ning Muslim/Muslim ticket should also find out what was the outcome of MKO Abiola and Kingibe ticket in 1993. If they try Muslim/Muslim tick¬et this time around, the out¬come will be worse because our fault lines are very visible.
“There is no party that has no great, good and patriotic Christians who can preside over the affairs of this nation not to talk of being the Vice President as some mischie¬vous people are trying to say. If merit and competence are used as yardsticks, we have many qualified Christians in all the 774 Local Government Areas of this country.”
The Northern Christian Elders Forum also sounded a note of warning that the country’s diversity should be taken into consideration by Tinubu while choosing his running mate.
The Christian group in its Democracy Day message to the nation, signed by its President, Ejoga Inalegwu, cautioned that Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian tickets would be insensitive.
He said: “We therefore appeal to all patriotic presidential candidates to avoid manipulative but dangerous and insensitive tickets that will further polarize the nation along religious lines when Nigerians are looking forward, with great expectations for a new dawn, come 2023; a new era and government devoid of politics of exclusion, discrimination and injustice.
“As the parties therefore make efforts to meet the deadline for the submission of their presidential and vice-presidential candidates, NOSCEF wants to again appeal to political parties to be sensitive to the mood of the nation, the religious diversity of our people and show patriotism by avoiding any action that will throw up our lines of divide, merely to win elections rather than steps that will unite our nation.
“We want to believe that anyone with the credentials to rule this nation from 2023, should be sensitive enough and not be a candidate that would take us back to our religious divides, through the instrument of Christian/Christian ticket or Muslim/Muslim ticket. We do not expect any patriot to, by so doing, again open the wounds for our past bitter religious divides.
“We need, as a nation, a united front to forge a new Nigeria, that will bring people together across religious divides because we do not lack quality across the religious and regional divides.”
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), in a similar move has warned the APC, against contemplating what it describes as a national suicide of selecting a Muslim as Tinubu’s running mate.
The group warned that such moves would throw Nigeria into a religious crisis in the event that APC wins the 2023 election.
However, Leader of the House of Representatives, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, believes that the running mate to Tinubu, may come from the North East geopolitical zone. He laboured, but without success, to explain the sensitivity of picking a Muslim as running mate to Tinubu.
Ado-Doguwa said: “There was a tentative zoning arrangement. I may be wrong but I know of a tentative zoning arrangement that started with the emergence of the National Chairman of the party from the North-Central and we gave it to Abdullahi Adamu. On the same zoning arrangement, it gave out the presidency to the South and God, in His mercy, has given it to the right person – Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“And in that same contemplated zoning agenda, it has given out the vice presidency to the North East. I may be wrong. This is not an official declaration of the party. I know of this tentative zoning arrangement that started during the election of the National Chairman (of the APC).”
Evading the question on a Muslim-Muslim ticket, Ado-Doguwa said: “My thought on that is straightforward in the sense that when you have someone who has earned and garnered a lot of confidence among various communities and peoples of different walks of life, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has garnered this sophisticated and unprecedented confidence in him. I think when you now begin to contemplate or talk about running mate, I think it is an issue that does not matter at all.
“I want to tell you that Nigerians believe in Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It does not matter who he takes. It could be a Muslim-Muslim ticket, I don’t want to contemplate that because this is something that should be discussed at the very high level. I may be part of it but for now, I should not contemplate that. It is not going to be quite significant.
“It is not going to be a difficult issue. I’m a member of NEC; I’m a member of the National Caucus of the party; I’m also a member of the tripartite body of the party, with Mr President being the Chairman. So, when such a time comes, we would discuss that.
“At this level, I would not like to contemplate, especially when the first thing we have to do is fence-mending and we have commenced that already.”
With the party yet to make an official declaration of its choice of a running mate to Tinubu, like Godot, Nigerians will have to wait, while dwelling on hearsay and unconfirmed rumours.