MUSLIM-MUSLIM TICKET: CAN’s negative roles revisited, as Nasarawa Governor tells why there should be no complaint

By KEMI KASUMU

“The whole Southern part of the country you have 17 governors; only one of them is Muslim. Nobody is complaining about that. Look at all the Southern governors of PDP; none of them is Muslim.”

As the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which should have mellowed down for its unresolved image crisis from its leading roles in the complications of the nation’s current situation, has unfortunately successfully planted yet another political, ethnic and religious controversy using its usual means, Governor of Nasarawa State, Engr. Abdullahi Sule, cautioned against complaint about Muslim-Muslim ticket.

Although the Nasarawa State Governor did not specifically mention CAN, the Christian apex body has been at the centre of such crisis-generating controversies in the country by its singularly identified chosen project of always using anti-Islam, anti-Muslim and anti-Northern Nigeria sentiments to drive his evangelical agenda for the country, investigations revealed.

CAN, with full control and support of some sections of the South concentrated media, has been involved in effort to make terrorism activities that had bedeviled the country’s North look like Nigeria at war with the Church even when its efforts to cover-up many pastors’ caught while trying to bomb or attack churches during service in Kaduna and Osun State remain undeniable, despite ensuring no media coverage of same.

Apart from kicking against judgement of a high court sitting in Yola, sentencing prosecuted five Christian youths to death for killing and burying Fulani Muslims in the mud, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had also been involved in support for Christian women protesters, who blocked the Army troops from searching a Jos pond for Major General Alkali Idris, killed and thrown into the mud by some Beron Christian youths.

CAN was also involved in the attempted attack on a Baptist Church in Ola Oluwa Local Government Area of Osun State during Rauf Aregbesola administration, to which the arrested attackers confessed was stage-managed to justify its claims that Aregbesola was planning to import Boko Haram terrorists into the state, as part of CAN’s anti-Hijab strategies of then.

The Muslim-Muslim ticket is CAN’s latest of all the controversies whereby it has programmed its member churches and pastors to intensify preachings against Muslim candidate, either from North or South, and vote for Christian candidate and party in favour of the Church saying Fulani is not the only tribe in Nigeria.

But Governor Abdullahi Sule, cautioning against such undemocratic and unpatriotic activities and utterances of CAN amidst President Muhammadu Buhari’s continued siddon look at those religious leaders heating up the polity, said no one should complain about Muslim-Muslim ticket as it is not new for such experience to happen in the country.

He said he was saying so because this is not the first time that Nigeria will have such a situation in place when two members of the same religious background would emerge on a single political ticket to contest in an election.

The governor, while fielding questions on a Channels Television programme, said this in his comment on the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s choice of Kashim Shettima as his running mate.

Governor Sule argued that majority of governors in the country rode on Christian-Christian tickets to power but nobody is complaining both that.

He said, “This is not the first time that we have had a president and his number two of the same faith. All people need to do is to go back and look at history of Nigeria.

“This also is not the first time that we have had elections where somebody from the South West will pick somebody from the North East both of the same faith. As a matter of fact, they won their elections.

“If you look at the number of governors that we have and the number of deputy governors we have, we have almost 64 percent who are Christians and the remaining are Muslims. Over 60 percent of governors and their deputies are actually Christians.

“The whole Southern part of the country you have 17 governors; only one of them is Muslim. Nobody is complaining about that. Look at all the Southern governors of PDP; none of them is Muslim.”