By – Rev. Fr. Dr. ChukwuEmekalum Nwosuh, OP
Shortly after Tinubu was nominated the APC Presidential Candidate, speculations were rife that he might likely select a Moslem as his running mate. Expectedly, both sides of the divide began to marshall their respective arguments on why he could or shouldn’t nominate a fellow Moselm as his running mate. In a country where ethnoreligious cleavages are palpable, it is not unexpected that matters of religion and ethnicity become sensitive issues in the distribution of political offices and resources. Well, Tinubu has finally laid to rest these speculations by nominating as his running mate the former Governor of Borno State, Governor Kashim Shettima, a Moslem from the North-East.
I have two seemingly contradictory views about his choice. On the one hand, I consider his choice irrelevant; on the other hand, I also see it as consequential. How are both views reconcilable? Let me begin with the import of his choice. If there is anything that Tinubu’s choice demonstrates, it is simply his lack of sensitivity and utter disregard for Nigerian Christians. As already noted, religion and ethnicity are issues that have become very sensitive in all aspects of our national and local politics. It really ought not to be so. And since we ought not to allow ethnoreligious considerations to override the more critical criteria of excellence, character, capacity, and competence, the issue of his running mate’s faith affiliation should not be a debate. However, this line of reasoning would have been sustainable only if we had come to that shared understanding that ethnoreligious considerations must always give way to character, competence, and capacity. But unfortunately, we are yet to agree on this more excellent criterion. But, of course, one may argue that someone must initiate this shift, and perhaps that is what Tinubu has done. Well, that may well be true, but the glaring fact is that his nominee is anything but competent, capable, and of sound character. It will be ludicrous to argue that Shettima is the most qualified, talented, and impugnable character in the whole of the North-East, not to mention the entire North. So, it is evident that it couldn’t have been the principle of merit that was the overriding criteria in his nomination as Tinubu’s running mate. Having excluded the merit criteria as a possible motivation for his choice, I will not even bother to hazard what could have been Tinubu’s motivation. But there is something quite evident in his choice.
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Tinubu’s choice of a fellow Moslem as a running mate within the context of prevailing fear and suspicion of plots to Islamize the country reveals his utter lack of sensitivity and prudence, two qualities expected of a good leader. It is a well-known fact that President Buhari has continually stoked ethnoreligious tensions in the country through his unprecedented bigotry and nepotism in all his political appointments. One, therefore, would have expected that Tinubu should have been a lot more sensitive and prudent in choosing his running mate. But is this simply a lack of sensitivity and prudence, or is there more to it?
Let us recall that Tinubu had publicly admitted to having helped install Buhari as President in 2015. Buhari’s administration has become the most disastrous in Nigeria’s political history. His ethnoreligious intolerance has polarized this country in a way it has never been before. Tinubu, who claims the credit for Buhari becoming President of Nigeria, has never admitted or apologized that he erred in helping to install the most incompetent, nepotistic, and bigoted
President ever to occupy Nigeria’s highest seat. Either he does not seem to recognize his protegee’s damage to the Nigerian State, or he does, and in fact, endorses it. His choice of a Muslim running can only suggest one thing, namely, that he wholeheartedly agrees with the exclusionist style of his protegee. Like his protegee, he is not only insensitive but despises the claims and rights of groups who are not part of his religious or ethnic affiliation. When one recalls his statement about pushing a particular ethnic group into the Lagoon during the 2019 elections, we get a clearer picture of an ethnoreligiocentric bigot. No matter how hard Tinubu’s supporters try to gloss over his unconscionable choice, they will never succeed in obscuring the fact that the same ethnoreligiocentric DNA runs in the veins of Tinubu and his protegee. This implies that should he accidentally find himself in that office, he will perpetuate the same ethnoreligious chauvinism as Buhari is unapologetically doing. Can Nigeria and Nigerians survive another four or more years of such bigotry coupled with utter incompetence and lack of character?
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Let’s remember that Buhari did not become an ethnoreligious chauvinist when he became Nigeria’s President. He has always been one, but those who championed, supported, and voted him to power refused to see it and successfully hid it from the eyes of Nigerians who weren’t so aware of it. Tinubu’s choice of a Muslim running mate merely brings to the surface his previously concealed religious bigotry. This newly uncovered flaw is an addition to the ones we earlier knew. Before now, we knew that he is utterly bereft of any progressive ideas, his political vision for the country is zero, that he romances corruption with consummate passion, and that he is a pathological liar. Nigerians cannot pretend not to see all these loud signs of the sort of misruler he is sure to become if Nigerians make the mistake of allowing him to come near the seat of power.
Now, I had earlier noted that his choice of running mate is of no relevance at all. How is that so? It is evident that because of his crippling moral flaws, such as his ethnoreligious bigotry, his character as a consummate liar, his addictive kleptomania for public funds, his intellectual sterility, etc., Tinubu is unfit to hold public office, much more the office of the President of Nigeria. If a priori, his moral deficiency excludes him from venturing near the office of the President, it then means that his choice of a running mate is entirely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if he had chosen Archangel Michael or the Pope as his running mate. His choice of even the best running mate cannot minimally attenuate his unsuitability for the office of the President. In other words, debating his choice of running mate is pointless when we shouldn’t even be discussing his Presidential ambition. Once someone is unfit to be President, a better-qualified subordinate cannot mitigate his unfitness. His protegee proves this fact. It didn’t matter that Buhari has, as his Vice-President, Osibanjo, who is better qualified than him, yet, Buhari has proven to be a miserable failure, a pestilential scourge, and a horrible nightmare for Nigeria and Nigerians. An excellent running mate can never make an incompetent and deficient principal suitable for the job. On the contrary, a clueless and incompetent principal can make even the most qualified subordinate look stupid and incompetent, as we see in the case of Osibanjo. So, rather than dissipate our breath debating over his choice, we should instead direct our energies focusing on how to usher in a new political order that the Peter Obi and Yusuf Datti Ahmed-Baba Movement represents.