After losing its predicted ‘God promise’ to produce next Nigeria’s President, CAN warns Tinubu, Atiku against Muslim-Muslim ticket

*See how CAN re-awakes Muslim Ummah from their sleep – Respondents

By KEMI KASUMU

There appears to be restlessness in the house of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) as many predictions of its member-pastors that God spoke to them, respectively, about next Nigeria’s President have failed to materialise with candidates of ruling All Progressives Congress (CAN) and leading opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerging and they are Muslims: Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Northern Fulani and Muslim and Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Southern Yoruba and Muslim.

It will be recalled that CAN member-pastor Tunde Bakare had said God spoke to him that he would be the successor to the presidential throne after President Muhammadu Buhari as next Nigeria’s President from 2023. This online newspaper also recalls that Pastor Enoch Adeboye had also predicted that the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) was going to produce Nigeria’s President in 2023.

Our investigations had also revealed that the much publicised memo directing all branches of Redeemed Church to create a Directorate of Politics was an act of Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) all in ensuring that, although Nigeria has more Muslim population than Christian but that the media-controlled Christian community will not vote for any Muslim candidate in 2023 general elections but Christian candidate as President.

This triggered the concerns in the Muslim Community and Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) and very many other Muslim groups began to wake up from their sleep of many decades and the results in how leading PDP produced not just a Northerner but also a Muslim regardless of the consciousness about the quest of South for power shift and, where APC governors of Northern Nigeria accepted the demand for power shift to the South, the emergence of a Muslim, who now undoubted will have no more than a Muslim candidate to choose as his running mate from the 90 percent Muslim North population.

An aide to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, in response to an enquiry by The DEFENDER about the Redeemed’s Directorate of Politics against a Muslim candidate in favour of Christian candidate and how it will not affect the chances of the doing well second-in-command becoming succeeding his boss, had dismissed the memo as unnecessary. But many that spoke to us said Christian Association of Nigeria recognises the power that Muslim Ummah can wield whether Muslim President or not and that, therefore, it would be doing damage to emergence of any Christian candidate as no Muslim in Nigeria would trust that their plan was not to implement their long-built Christianisation Agenda.

They said CAN was also accusing President Buhari of Islamisation and Northernisation Agenda knowing full well that it is the CAN itself that has that agenda in mind and has been looking forward to one day it will now implement it and wage serious battle against Muslim population of Nigeria, which it started by making it impossible for National Population Census to have provision for Religion in the 2006 Census and it has been seen clearly in its war against Hijab and Muslim identity in parts of the country especially in South West and South East Nigeria.

But all of those have failed without any of the two most important parties producing a Christian candidate.  To this end, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has repeatedly its warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to bury the thought of Muslim/Muslim tickets for the 2023 presidential election or face its resistance. It described such an idea as a threat to the “fragile peace and unity” of the country.

CAN, in a statement by its national secretary, Mr Joseph Daramola, said a balance of practitioners of both religions should be considered in the choice of running mates of the presidential candidates. It also congratulated the presidential candidates of the APC, the PDP and the Labour Party (LP), Senator Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi, respectively, as well as other parties participating in the forthcoming election.

The statement read in part: “We do not subscribe to Christian/Christian ticket or Muslim/Muslim ticket. Politicians can talk politics but we stated our view long before now.

“Any party that tries same religion ticket will fail. This is not 1993. Even when we have joint Muslim/Christian ticket, the church still goes through hell. Only God knows the number of Christians that have been killed in the last seven years with no one apprehended or prosecuted.

“Imagine how bad it will be if we have two Muslims in power? The extant Nigerian constitution promotes religious balance. So, if any political party wants to try Muslim/ Muslim ticket, it is to its own peril. CAN is only forewarning but will make a categorical statement in the event our warning is not heeded.

“The running mate of the APC presidential flag-bearer, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, should be a Christian from the North; Atiku’s running mate should be a Christian from the South while Obi should choose his own among the Muslims from the North.

“Anything contrary to the above means that the leadership of these political parties do not bother about the unity of this entity called Nigeria.

“Those who are planning Muslim/Muslim ticket should also find out what was the outcome of MKO Abiola and Kingibe ticket in 1993. If they try Muslim/Muslim ticket this time around, the outcome will be worse because our fault lines are very visible.

“There is no party that has no great, good and patriotic Christians who can preside over the affairs of this nation, not to talk of being the vice president as some mischievous people are trying to say. If merit and competence are used as yardsticks, we have many qualified Christians in all the 774 local government areas of this country.

“In the ongoing dispensation, CAN leadership cried in vain to ask President Muhammadu Buhari to break the monopoly or dominance of the security architecture with people of same faith.

“We are all seeing the outcome now. It is obvious that the Nigeria of today is different from that of 1993. Our politicians should stop flouting the constitution by respecting the North and South dichotomy and religious factor.

“To those arguing that people do not care about the religions of their leaders once they are competent and credible, we dare the APC to pick its presidential running mate from the South and PDP pick its own from the North and see what follows.

“Our politicians should be doing what will unite us instead of what will further polarise the country.”

CAN cause  of this

A respondent, who did not want to be mentioned, said the cause of all of this is Christian Association of Nigeria because it has never stood on the path of fairness, justice and peace with the Muslim Ummah since it began in its like-activist like-political opposition activities that has provoked Muslims in the country but who have yet patiently tolerated them until it came full out recently with the 2023 Christianisation Agenda.

“You will recall that until Muslims began to wake up recently, the plan of CAN had been this way that they already the entire South East and South South and have made the larger Muslim population of South West either nominal or unrealistically silent and then they began in encroach to the North through the North Central. If they had gotten it from Benue, Plateau, parts of Nasarawa, Kogi and Niger states, they should have known that it would be tough to go to the extent of wanting to eradicate Islamic identity in Kwara State which they did and which led to their killing of a Muslim man for peacefully protesting against hijab ban in Oyun school, in the state.

“They believe that in Kaduna they were on ground and used that do crusades many times against the Muslim population until they lost of the opportunity to even make the deputy governorship candidate because during the second term of Nasir El-Rufai and they had already turned the state to war zone through the South Kaduna to pain Muslim bad, the Governor having warned the that no one would hide under religion to disturb the peace of his state, went ahead to pick a Muslim deputy and from their midst in Southern Kaduna and, despite their noise that for choosing a Muslim-Muslim ticket, El-Rufai would lose, the governor won the 2019.

“That, let me tell you, is to tell you that anywhere in the North with the exception of maybe Benue and Plateau, not even Taraba or Nasara, Muslim-Muslim ticket will win election including in Kwara and Kogi states. Christian Association of Nigeria caused it because of their intolerance and still continue to accuse Muslims of what they are in actual fact guilty of.

“Have you not heard that when Kayode Fayemi was asked to pick a Muslim deputy in 2018 he replied the Muslim Community of Ekiti State that with Christian-Christian he would win election, showing disregard for the Muslims although he is tolerated because he is the only governor in South West of Nigeria that made Hijab a no-problem thing when he simply issued an Executive Order to the effect that Muslim female students who want to use Hijab must not be stopped from doing so and today, Ekiti can be said to be a good state for Islam-Christianity relations.

“In that same South West because of the threats of CAN and its domination of the media with its foreign collaborators Dollar economy with which it carries out all of these, you even have Muslim governors who failed woefully to achieve what a Christian governor in Fayemi did. That is why, whether Christian-Christian ticket, Fayemi will remain friend of the Muslim Ummah of Nigeria for as long as you care to know.  Muslim governors like Babatunde Fashola watched his Commissioner for Education, a Redeemed Church member tell Muslim parents complaining over disturbance on Hijab that they should take their children from public schools to Muslim schools where they could wear Hijab. To Fashola’s face, Muslim girls in school were persecuted in Lagos and he had nothing to do about it. Is it because he married a Dame as wife? This is the problem of CAN that Muslims had tolerated for too long.

“Not even with an Aregbesola did it get better. Muslim went to court, got judgement, what stopped you from standing your ground in implementing the court judgement if not that Muslims in the South West are so weakened by CAN and when they want to talk they will say Muslims in Northern Nigeria are ‘violent’ because Islam was imposed on the region from the top-down but that Muslims in South West are ”liberal’ because Islam came to them from down-top. By that they mean that leaders in authority made Islam means of ruling over the population and so that the populace in the North do not have understanding like South Muslims have where Islam is not means of authority.

“They fail to tell a balance story that no part of the country comprehensive understanding of Islam has been entrenched like the North, although you cannot have a 100 percent in any situation, and that – if they say Islam rules in the North – Christianity rules as state authority in the South especially South West reason all the system from school to offices are tailored along Christianity.  They will not tell you all of that. This is the truth they have hidden for long and which we are aware of but patiently endure.  The Muslim Ummah has waken up now,” he said.