By Professor Abdussamad Umar Jibia
The year 2023 was a remarkable year in Nigeria’s history. Just like the year 1993, an election was held that generated a win for a Muslim candidate with another Muslim as his running mate.
In both 1993 and 2023, the presidential candidates were warned against choosing a Northern Christian as a running mate. Christians constitute not just a tiny minority in the North, but many of them have also proven to be very bad neighbours in their relations with their Muslim compatriots.
Wherever Christians constitute the majority, they display an unforgivable hate and marginalisation against their Muslim neighbours. A handy example is Plateau state, the home state of the current APC Chairman. The way Muslims are sidelined in Plateau state is enough to show what we should expect if Christians were the majority in Nigeria.
His Excellency Peter Obi was misled into believing that a combination of Igbo and Northern Christians could make him the President, and he moved from one church to another to campaign, only to end up in third place.
The 2023 election was thus a religious census in disguise that showed the numerical superiority of Muslims over Christians in Nigeria.
But no sooner had Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the 2023 presidential election than he began to sideline Muslims, the very group that brought him to power, in his appointments. Last year, we saw him personally going to the Vatican with what the state house described as a “bragging right of 62% Christian appointees”.
We watched as he appointed a Northern Christian as the SGF. Of course, President Muhammadu Buhari did the same. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua appointed a Northern Christian to lead the National Assembly. They did not deserve any of these, given their small number. However, Muslims gave them out of magnanimity. Or is it foolishness? They would never do the same if they were in our position.
Many of us became disappointed when we saw a Northern Christian being chosen to lead the ruling party. This means two of the most important positions at the federal level have been given to Christians from the North Central, a geopolitical zone that is overwhelmingly Muslim. Worse still, our politicians in and outside the ruling party, our emirs and Islamic scholars are silent. When have we become animals who only care about eating food and sleeping with women?
As if that is not enough, speculation is that the President wants to drop his VP and choose a Northern Christian as his running mate in next year’s election. I commend the Honourable Minister of Culture, Hajiya Hannatu Musawa, for publicly telling the truth to Mr President. But it shouldn’t have reached this level. The decision of the President to appoint Northern Christians as SGF, Party Chairman and INEC Chair should have been opposed in the first place.
We are still expecting Mr President to correct the imbalance that favours the very tiny Northern Christians. North Central is predominantly Muslim. The only Christian majority states, where, of course, Muslims have been marginalised, are Plateau and Benue. Niger, Nasarawa, Kogi and Kwara are Muslim states. That Muslims in those states have been left out by Mr President in the above-mentioned strategic appointments is unfortunate.
Professor Abdussamad Umar Jibia wrote from the Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Bayero University Kano, via aujibia@gmail.com.