The ongoing search for deputy for presidential candidates by the major political parties in the country has made a mockery of our religious hypocrisy, where what matters should be the competence of the individual who desires to be selected from such party.
The brouhaha is being raised to another level because of a feeler that All Progressives Congress (APC) is about to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket which many see as an affront to the religious sensibility of other religions practitioners. Whereby many refuse to see beyond that and look for competence.
It’s quite amazing and at the same time shameful that the only time we all realize that our religions matter as Muslims or Christians is only when it’s time to play politics during electioneering. Prayer meeting likewise for asalatu, we do not go. Mid-week service as the same Jummah prayer, we do not go. What came out of it with Obasanjo, Jonathan, and Osinbajo being Christians or Babangida, Abacha and Buhari being Muslims?
There are states where governors have been consistently Christians, with Christian deputies, where the states are not better for it. There are also states constantly being governed by Muslims, where the people are not better for it. But as Karl Marx said, religion is the opium of the people.
Many are asking if the North will accept Christian-Christian. Nigeria’s secularity and its demography invalidate such a question. Our behaviors have shown that before religion, it is geographical politics first, a near homogeneous Muslim north vs heterogeneous Christian south.
Christians and Muslims in politics in the south will always have to compete. The North will never have to worry about the religion of who represents them. Funnily, because of our holier than thou, Christians hardly accept that Christians in politics represent Christian interests.
If not recently, Osinbajo that people all carried on their heads in a tray like Agege bread has been called names in Christian circles. Even by his constituent denomination, The Redeemed Christians Church of God (RCCG) people gossiped about him as a sell-out.
Anyways for me, politics and religion have different perceptive, especially in this our clime. Many here are talking of the inter-religion aspect…what of those that are having intra-religion issues. We have had a situation where a Catholic will say (s)he would not support an Anglican. It is just sad
