Caught between two opposing interests, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Sunday picked a fellow Muslim as his running mate despite the warning by Christian groups in the country, LEKE BAIYEWU writes
The All Progressives Congress is about to conduct a major electoral experiment with the presidential election in 2023 as its candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, picked a fellow Muslim and former Borno State Governor, Senator Kashim Shettima as his running mate.
For the APC, the Muslim-Muslim ticket has now become a reality and the political analysts are divided over the mono-religious presidency that the party is trying to sell to the electorate.
While a school of thought has argued that religion – and ethnicity – should be downplayed in the selection of leaders, especially at a time when Nigeria is in a dire need of efficient leadership and good governance, believing that competence and capacity are the qualities that matter most, another school believes otherwise. There is a counter-argument that it is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic nation and these divisions should be reflected in the configuration of the country’s leadership to make the others have a sense of belonging.
Some political analysts have long ago pointed out that Tinubu, from the South, might be forced to pick a Muslim running mate who must be from the North where Islam is the dominant religion and the Christians are in the minority. To these pundits, a Muslim-Muslim ticket is a necessity for Tinubu, and the APC by extension, to penetrate the North and win in the region. Tinubu has amidst warnings and protests picked Shettima, a Muslim. The vice-presidential candidate is the lawmaker currently representing Borno Central Senatorial District at the Senate – and a Kanuri man from a region where the Fulani and the Hausa are the powerful forces.
The Tinubu-Shettima’s Muslim-Muslim ticket will be put to the popularity test 30 years after the late Moshood Abiola and Babagana Kingibe, both Muslims, ran for presidency on the platform of the Social Democratic Party. Indeed, the mono-religious ticket won the election held on June 12, 1993, which was widely acclaimed to be the country’s freest and fairest, though it was annulled by the then military regime led by Gen Ibrahim Babangida. Critics of the similar move by the APC are, however, quick to point out that the socio-political, ethnoreligious and economic factors have changed between 1993 and 2023.
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It is worthy to note that Nigeria once witnessed a notable Christian-Christian ticket, which had the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the late Chief Philip Umeadi of the Unity Party of Nigeria in 1979. Awolowo was from Ogun State in the present-day South-West geopolitical zone while Umeadi was from the Old Anambra State now in the South-East. There are accounts that Awolowo was forced to pick another southerner when his choices in the North turned him down.
Another point that must be made is that the issue around the ethnoreligious composition of presidential tickets emerges on the front burner almost every election season. When former military dictator, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), a Muslim, emerged as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress in 2014, there were indications that Tinubu, the national leader of the newly formed APC, would be the vice-presidential candidate but for the religious factor.
After his running battles with the powers that be, President of the 8th Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, in 2016 disclosed that he was allegedly persecuted especially over his emergence as Senate president, for opposing and working against the alleged plan by the APC to fly a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2015 presidential election. Saraki had made this known in his article which was published on April 23, 2016, in response to that of Chief Dele Momodu in his Pendulum column.
In what appeared to have confirmed Saraki’s allegation, Tinubu, later in 2017, alleged that Saraki and the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, worked against the plan to make him Buhari’s running mate in 2015. Tinubu alleged that Saraki, el-Rufai and other stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party, who defected to the APC in the build-up to the 2015 elections, instigated Buhari and some APC chieftains not to pick him as the would-be vice-president, according to a book titled ‘Against the Run of Play,’ written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi.
Again, Tinubu, in his now-famous Abeokuta speech recalled how Saraki, el-Rufai and other leaders in the APC prevented his emergence as Buhari’s running mate due to their opposition to a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Responding, via a statement issued by the Head of his Media Office, Yusuph Olaniyonu, Saraki stated, “When I and other leaders of the All Progressives Congress in 2014 stood against having a Muslim-Muslim ticket, it was not a decision targeted at any individual or group but one taken in the national interest. Asiwaju knows this and he is just being mischievous by presenting this decision as something aimed at stopping his ambition.”
