UCHECHUKWU OKOROAFOR, ABUJA
Nigeria cannot afford to weaponise faith in the contest for power. Recent actions associated with the presidency and the ruling All Progressives Congress risk framing the 2027 presidential election as a religious contest between Christians and Muslims. That path is dangerous, shortsighted, and corrosive to the fragile unity of a multi-religious nation.
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Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir, a prominent Islamic cleric and leader within JIBWIS, recently described Christians as “infidels” while vigorously campaigning for another Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. In remarks that circulated widely, he urged Muslims to mobilise their numbers and “show the infidels their limit,” while portraying opposition to same-faith tickets as unacceptable. The comments drew sharp condemnation from Christian leaders, human-rights advocates, the National Human Rights Commission, and even some Muslim voices who rightly noted that such language contradicts both Islamic teachings on People of the Book and Nigeria’s constitutional commitment to equality of citizenship. Jingir later claimed his words were misinterpreted and that he does not hate Christians. The damage, however, was already done: the rhetoric reduced a national election to a religious score-settling exercise.
Compounding the problem is the timing and optics of high-level political patronage. Kabiru Ibrahim Masari, Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Political Matters, publicly pledged N300 million toward a university project linked to Jingir’s organisation. Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni pledged another N300 million, bringing the announced total to N600 million. The pledges were made at a JIBWIS-organised symposium. Supporting education is legitimate. Doing so in the immediate shadow of a cleric’s polarising religious-political advocacy, however, raises unavoidable questions about the relationship between state resources, religious influence, and electoral strategy.
Around the same period, more than 500 Islamic scholars and clerics emerged from a closed-door engagement with northern APC governors, the Deputy Senate President, and the same presidential adviser to endorse President Tinubu’s re-election bid for 2027. Religious leaders are free to express political preferences. When such a large bloc endorsement coincides with the open promotion of a Muslim-Muslim ticket and the public embrace of a cleric who has used exclusionary language, the cumulative signal is unmistakable: the ruling party appears willing to lean on religious identity as a primary electoral instrument.
This is not abstract theory. Nigeria has paid a heavy price whenever politics is reduced to Christian versus Muslim mobilisation. The wounds of past crises remain raw in many communities. Framing 2027 as a religious struggle will deepen mutual suspicion, embolden extremists on all sides, alienate moderate voters of every faith, and distract from the urgent questions of governance—security, the cost of living, jobs, infrastructure, and institutional integrity—that actually determine whether citizens thrive or merely survive.
President Tinubu and the APC leadership should take clear, public steps to reject this trajectory. They should distance the party from any rhetoric that denigrates citizens on the basis of faith. They should insist that support for the administration rests on performance and policy, not religious solidarity. They should ensure that political outreach to religious communities is balanced and transparent, not concentrated in ways that fuel perceptions of sectarian favouritism. And they should remind all surrogates that Nigeria’s democracy is founded on equal citizenship, not on the numerical strength of any religious group.
Elections in a diverse country succeed when they test ideas, competence, and character—not when they mobilise one faith against another. Turning 2027 into a battle between Christians and Muslims would be a profound failure of leadership. It would endanger social cohesion, undermine the legitimacy of the eventual winner, and leave Nigeria more divided than before. The presidency and the APC still have time to choose a different path. They should take it.
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