President Bola Tinubu and his deputy, Kashim Shettima
Those who, along with Ahmed Bola Tinubu, conjured the ill wind of a Muslim – Muslim ticket for the All Progressives Congress (APC) heading into the 2023 Presidential elections must by now be gnawing their nails and gnashing their teeth in anguished regret. This is given the whiplash of vociferous negative reactions from Christians and just about any right thinking person who knows anything about Nigeria and its more than two hundred million citizens and who must have followed Tinubu’s misadventure in announcing Kashim Shettima as his preferred Vice Presidential candidate going into next year’s polls.
Probably lured into a false sense of over confidence by the seeming complacence of Nigerian Christians in Nigeria towards matters pertaining to their faith, Tinubu and his co-travelers tragically misread the situation.
First, having observed that Christians love and, in most cases, prefer to obey Christ’s injunction to ‘turn the other cheek’, the Tinubu gang felt certain that this deliberate provocation would yet again go without a challenge. Afterall, hundreds of Christians have been killed, maimed and persecuted across the nation, even in their home lands, without so much as a whimper, haven’t they? So, why would the little matter of a vice Presidential ticket raise any Christian eye brows?
Besides, they must have reasoned, didn’t the MKO/Kingibe kite appear to fly
before it was shot down?
And so, fully confident that Nigerian Christians, ‘the avaricious lot that they are’, always have their hands out for money; also with absolute faith in the bottomless pockets of their capacious ‘babanrigas’ (always filled with the good stuff, lousy or otherwise), the tragic conspirators set forth, confident in the victory of yet another campaign against the ‘infidels’, as they love to brand Christians!
But how wrong they were! Like a balloon in the face of a careless child, it is on the verge of blowing up in their faces; the plot has backfired and is now a ticking time bomb waiting to explode in their hands!
Those who forget the lessons of history are bound to repeat its mistakes, a wise man once said. Like a disturbed hornets’ nest, the reactions have been vicious and instantaneous. Strident condemnations, massive resignations from the party and mass rebellion have been the response to this insensitive and ill timed manouvre.
Comings from Tinubu, though a man of dubious academic background and even more shady business dealings, but who is, no doubt a much travelled and exposed human being who many expected to be aware of Nigeria’s existing explosive fault lines, the move took most people, even his fellow Muslims, by surprise!
One of the first to voice strident and sustained opposition to Tinubu and co’s ill-fated plot was former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), a well known close friend of Tinubu’s. Before long, the Christian Association of Nigeria (NAN), and several other prominent bodies, voiced opposition to the move, clearly dividing the country along religious lines.
Yet, stubborn as the fly which followed the corpse into the grave, the APC went ahead and consummated Shettima’s coronation, digging deeper into their own grave with the ‘TinuBishops’ disgraceful episode. All manners of hirelings were put out there in a quest to justify the misadventure on grounds that it is based on considerations of merit and efficiency, a direct insult inferring that there’s no credible and efficient individual amongst millions of northern Christians to fill the slot.
But, as sure as Takuruku leads the Tiv nation, payback time for this faux pas looms near.
Just few days back, a visiting body of international political observers raised the real possibility of a run-off election in next year’s Presidential elections, given the rising popularity of Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, especially among Nigerian youth.
This Muslim-Muslim ticket may yet be the greatest factor in that revolution.
