A popular clergyman in the north, Prophet Isa El-Buba who is the General Overseer of the Evangelical Outreach Ministries International in Jos, Plateau State has condemned the decision of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 presidential election.
According to El-Buba, the decision of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the APC to pick Senator Kashim Shettima as the vice presidential candidate is highly insensitive and does not portray equity and fairness.
He argued that with the Muslim-Muslim ticket, the APC has messed up its chances at the polls and won’t get the votes from a section of Nigerians.
In his view, in a nation of over 200 million people, it is an insult and a political miscalculation on the part of the APC to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
In his words, such a move is “injurious to the faith of a people” adding that Nigeria is not ready for a same religion ticket.
“On the average, there are more than 50 million Christians in northern Nigeria alone. You can’t try to neglect, abuse or look down on a people that control this large number. Even if they are 10 million, they need to be recongnized properly. You can’t say that out of 50 million people, there is no competent person to be the Vice President. Generally, no political party in Nigeria in its right senses should have contemplated fielding a Muslim-Muslim ticket or Christian-Christian ticket. Nigeria has not matured to that level. It will take years for such trust and confidence to be built in the people,” he said in an interview with Punch.
The clergyman added that with the development, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the APC to convince Nigerians that it is not pursuing an Islamization agenda.
The Muslims themselves are not entirely happy with a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket, El-Buba noted.
“That is the reality. So, it is an abuse. Even the Muslims themselves are not happy with the decision of the APC to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket. I have hundreds of messages in my phone from our Muslim brothers expressing themselves and saying that they are not happy with the APC’s decision because that is like trying to hurt a family that is trying to build itself.”
Continuing, he said many Christians in the country are ready to make a statement with their votes in the 2023 elections and particularly, Northern Christians are set to teach APC a lesson over the Muslim-Muslim ticket.
“…But I can tell you that 99.9 per cent of Christians are going to totally make a collective statement with their votes. And our Muslim brothers, many of them who are solidly behind us, will also flow in the direction we’re going. I tell you the truth, the real northerners are angry.
I will tell you that work is going on. Discussions are going on and we are very much prepared to make sure that we teach them a lesson of their lives so that no politician or anyone else would ever take the Nigerian people for granted again. They should never test the will of the Nigerian people and we will prove that during this election…”
