IF a person is meant for the mud, they will wallow in it even if you plant them in a palace. That is the story of many (wo)men in high places, and it is the story of the hideous, divisive faith merchant whose provocative utterances birthed this piece. The individual, an All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmaker in the Oyo State House of Assembly called Ibrahim Shittu, urged Muslim voters to reject political parties that field Christian candidates for the 2027 election in the state! If you haven’t seen the video circulating on social media in which Shittu, who represents Saki West State Constituency, made the idiotic remarks, I suggest you do so right away. Watching that video, you begin to wonder how such an intellectual cripple and political provocateur made it to a state House of Assembly, but then you realize that governance in the country called Nigeria has been sold to the dogs for ages, and it’s only fitting that you encounter characters like this.
Addressing a group of Muslim leaders, Shittu said: ‘We are appealing to you, our fathers, that you must stand with our candidates who are Muslims. Anyone who selects a Christian candidate for governor, let us reject them and not vote for them. If we vote for them, they will punish Muslims. Support all our Muslim candidates in APC. Any political party with a Christian governorship candidate must not be voted for. If such a person is voted in, Islam will suffer. Anyone that picks a Christian as governor, please let’s reject him and not vote for him because if we vote for them, Islam will suffer.’ Then, apparently referencing Governor Seyi Makinde, he said: ‘He is a Christian and we are Muslims; we know the kind of suffering he has meted out to us.’
Before certain lunatics invade the media space claiming Shittu was misquoted, let me say that I am Yoruba and I do not need anyone to interpret what Shittu said to me. I heard him, as they say, loud and clear. And my immediate question to him is this: Mr. Shittu, if Muslims are not to vote for Christian candidates in 2027, why should any Christian vote for Muslim candidates? What structure of a head does a monkey have that a gorilla does not? Specifically, why should Christians in Oyo State vote for Sharafadeen Alli, your party’s governorship candidate, or for you yourself? Or is your electoral world a one-way traffic populated only by Muslims?
In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), the English philosopher, John Locke, wrote: ‘No private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion.’ But a kindred spirit, Voltaire, was even more direct: ‘The individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.’ His reason: ‘We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.’
Naturally, for some people, Voltaire and Locke might well have been addressing the wind. Ask Louis XIV of France, the Catholic monarch who hunted down French Protestants and hounded many out of France. Ask Mary I of England, who took great joy in burning the same people, branding them as heretics. Ask Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who used the Spanish Inquisition to enforce religious conformity. If men like Shittu and his ideological father, Muhammadu Buhari, had the power, they would do far worse to dissenters.
Ah, the Daura Deceiver. Here is a report by ThisDay on January 21, 2002: ‘As the year 2003 elections draw closer, former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), has called on Muslims across the country to vote only for the presidential candidate that would defend and uphold the tenets of Islam. Buhari, who made the call yesterday at the closing ceremony of the 16th National Qur’anic Recitation competition held in Gusau, Zamfara State, told Muslims that they have every reason to thank Allah for restoring Islamic Sharia under the present dispensation, which he said was destroyed by British colonialists during their crusade in 1903 against the Sokoto Caliphate.’ Was it any surprise, then, that in 2015 Buhari went on to become a rigidly provincial, provocatively partisan president who, in reference to Fulani herders who had staged a pogrom in the state on New Year’s Day 2018, asked a grieving Benue populace to ‘accommodate their countrymen’?
It is not a crime to love and propagate your faith. I have never hidden the fact that I am a Christian, although not a Trinitarian. I believe that Almighty God is a Sovereign Spirit who cannot be born, cannot die, and does not sleep. But I have never sought to impose my belief on anyone, nor looked down on anyone. In the world of people like Shittu and his father Buhari, only people in their religious circle matter; the rest are like dots in a circle and can go to blazes. All three Oyo senators in the National Assembly are Muslims, and Governor Makinde has been praised by Muslim leaders for his pro-Islamic gestures, yet Shittu says Makinde is tormenting Muslims in Oyo State. He did not provide a shred of evidence. This was the same way Buhari, before he got into office, said that an attack on Boko Haram was an attack on the North, that Muslims should only vote for fellow Muslims, and that there was nothing like subsidy. We all know how he ended up taking Nigeria back by many decades, causing untold poverty and despair and plunging it into unprecedented insecurity. Now, a dangerously subversive candidate once promised to impose the North’s brand of Sharia law on Oyo State, and another is preaching a janjaweed sermon.
Ibrahim Shittu has desecrated the Oyo State House of Assembly with his provocative utterances. He has shown that he is a religious bigot who can’t bear the thought of non-Muslims in public office. He can relocate to Afghanistan, where he will have unfettered access to his demons.
Re: Who bewitched Nigeria’s opposition?
GM sir. Don’t know why intellectuals like you are stressing over opposition party. What are they opposing? I personally listened to both Obi and Atiku, I saw nothing but emptiness hinged on ‘It is Igbos turn (Obi) ‘ and ‘I want to be president by all means.'( Atiku). Let Tinubu kuku continue jare, nothing positive will manifest if either of duo gets elected. Me I won’t vote and will convince anyone around not to waste their time.
Re: How could the Nigerian movie industry have started in the 90s?
If you ask me, ‘One Nigeria’ is the reason we are having conversation like this. Revisionism similar to Azikwe ‘s claim on Western Region’s election as exposed by Bolanle Bolawole. Lagos is no man’s land , Na we develop Lagos, etc. Igberaga, igbera sanle (Pride goes before a fall).