UNITY TIMES EDITORIAL DESK
The presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu has perfected a dangerous art: the strategic silence that speaks louder than any press statement.
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Months ago, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi dropped a bombshell that should have shaken the foundations of Aso Rock. The Kaduna-based cleric declared that the Federal Government already knows every terrorist and bandit operating in Nigeria by name and by exact location. He claimed his own controversial negotiations with these groups were never solo missions; security agencies were present, fully aware.
The implication was clear and devastating: the state possesses the intelligence, yet the killings, kidnappings, and displacements continue.
What followed? Nothing. No denial. No clarification. No investigation announced. No presidential aide rushed to the microphones. The allegation was simply left to die a quiet death while Nigerians, exhausted by insecurity, moved on. The silence was not neutral. It was a choice.
Now the same pattern has returned, sharper and more poisonous. Islamic cleric Sheikh Yahya Jingir recently stood before a political crowd and called President Tinubu his “political hero” for the 2023 Muslim-Muslim ticket and for signalling its continuation in 2027.
He went further. The victory, he said, proves Muslims are more numerous than Christians. He labelled Christians “infidels.” He described them as second-class citizens. He urged Muslims to collect their PVCs and “show the infidels their limit.”
Again, the presidency has said nothing of substance. No condemnation. No distancing. No reminder that Nigeria is a multi-religious republic where no citizen is an infidel or second-class under the Constitution. The usual rapid-response machinery—Bayo Onanuga, Daniel Bwala, Sunday Dare—remained uncharacteristically quiet. The silence has been absolute.
Imagine the reverse. Picture a Christian cleric or public figure standing before cameras and declaring Muslims “infidels,” second-class, and demanding they be shown their place. The reaction from the same presidency would have been immediate, furious, and coordinated. Press releases would have flown. Accusations of hate speech and division would have filled the airwaves. The double standard is not subtle. It is institutional.
This selective quiet is not mere political calculation. It is a signal. It tells one community that inflammatory rhetoric from its own side will be tolerated, while equivalent language from the other will be treated as existential threat. It tells Christians watching their villages burn and their pastors abducted that their equal citizenship is conditional.
And it hands powerful ammunition to those in Washington who insist that Christian persecution in Nigeria is real, systematic, and enabled by official indifference.
President Donald Trump’s administration has not been subtle. It has spoken of Christian genocide, redesignated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, and even authorised military action.
Nigerian officials and their expensive lobbyists in the United States work overtime to deny the religious character of the violence. Yet every unanswered statement from Gumi and Jingir makes that denial harder to sustain. When the government knows the names and locations of killers but will not act, and when it will not even rebuke those who publicly demote Christians to “infidels,” the claim of complicity gains force.
Nigeria’s Constitution is unambiguous. Freedom of religion. Equal citizenship. No second-class status. A government that believes these principles would have answered Gumi with transparency and Jingir with firm rejection. Instead, it has chosen silence on both.
That silence is not empty. It is filled with meaning. It deepens distrust. It hardens divisions. And it tells the world that in Tinubu’s Nigeria, some voices are allowed to redraw the boundaries of belonging while others are expected to endure in quiet. The presidency may hope these matters fade. They will not. Silence this loud eventually becomes the story itself.
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