INTERVIEW: Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim ticket an insult to Christians — this isn’t 1993, says Igboke

By Genevieve Aningo

The 2023 election has continued to dominate discussions in several quarters. A major issue ahead of next year’s poll is the Muslim-Muslim ticket of Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In this piece, Ambrose Igboke, the ace Nigerian broadcaster, public affairs analyst and Public Relations (PR), dissects major issues in the country’s political landscape ahead of 2023.

Igboke featured on a recent Twitter space organised by CRISPNG.

From the results and happenings of Ekiti and Osun state can you say Nigeria is ready for 2023 election?

First of all, I want to lay a background to our democratic experience. This is the 62nd year we have independence. We would rather say that military regime has been the norm. The real democracy started on and May 29 1999 and so we have 23 years of unbroken transition.

We must say from the experience we have, we are getting better especially in the area of the electoral process. The game-changer was the introduction of the electoral card readers. We migrated from absolute manual forms of election to a little bit of technology being used. So we must give kudos to Attahiru Jega and Jonathan Goodluck for allowing that experiment to happen.

We can see from the card reader we now have the bimodal biometric access card rather than having Incident forms. Everything about manuals has been eliminated and that was tried in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun elections. From trajectory we can monitor elections online and this electoral 2022 process was a game changer. It has knocked off a lot of things and for the first time in our electoral law, we admitted electronic voting. 

What this has done is that it has eliminated the issue of ballot snatching that we used to have in elections. So it’s a game changer, the Osun experiment has shown us  that things can work but what is remaining for us to look into is actually the issue of voting buying. 

Do you play blind to the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progreesives Congress or have some reservations to that move? 

The interpretation of that is that all the northern Christians are idiots. The implication of the Muslim-Muslim is that all northern APC Christians politicians are incapable or bunch of idiots or that they don’t know anything and incompetent and that is a lie. Nigeria is heavily divided into south and north predominant number of Islam in the north and predominant number of Christians in the south.

Nigeria has been careful not to insult the sensibilities of any of these two major groups. That is why in the first Republic mostly Gowon and the rest were having Christian leadership because many northern were not qualified then

Also, you could see that after the Nigeria-Biafra war, there was a conscious effort to ensure that there is a balance in the two religion divide. Former president Olusegun Obsanjo ensured that northern Muslim was his vice president. When it was the time of Yar’ Adua he ensured it was a southern Christian, Goodluck Jonathan was his deputy. When Yar ‘Adua died, Jonathan had to look for a northern Muslim candidate, Namadi Sambo to become the vice president. These are acts of deliberate balancing to ensure that we have to live by respecting the sensibility of others.

It is Bola Ahmed Tinubu that have been pushing for Muslim-Muslim ticket. Presidential aspirant Atiku Abubakar in an interview, said that Tinubu pushed it in 2007 under the Action Congress of Nigeria. Again in 2015, Tinubu  wanted to be the running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari but  Buhari insisted that it should be  Yemi Osinbajo, the current vice president.

Now, it is clear that Bola Tinubu does not respect the sensibilities of other groups and is not good. Tinubu should stop alluding to 1993 because then it is not 2022, a lot has happened. There was no Boko Haram threat, priests being kidnapped, there was no fear of Islamic domination in the north and no case of Christians been massacred in the church from 2011 to 2022. Religions matter everywhere. In fact the majority of wars are caused by religion. So anybody that says religion does not matter is playing the ostrich.

That is why in Nigeria we have tried to maintain the balance to give people a sense of belonging to say nobody is left aside in the political and power equation. This is key and anyone playing down on that is being hypocritical 

What is your view about critics of the Labour Party not having the structure to ensure that their Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi wins the 2023 elections?

When it comes to Peter Obi, It is a moving phenomenon that is causing jittery in all the established political wings. Peter Obi has been a distracter of the status detractor quo in political gladiators. When he contested for the Anambra election, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was firmly in control of Anambra state. It cannot be whispered that PDP could have yielded Anambra state. But he came in and nobody gave him a chance.

Before he came into the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), it had no structure and was just a political party. PDP was the king in the south east in all the five states. He went to APGA and they were taunting him but he won against all odds and APGA became the ruling party in Anambra state and the structures of APGA started coming up

Peter Obi was one of the people that helped to shape our democracy into the growth it has today. Peter obi that made Nigerian politics witness the fact that the day of your swearing is the day your tenure begins. It was Peter Obi that took People’s Democratic Party and INEC to court  and that is why we have different elections like the likes of Anambra, Ekiti, Osun and Edo states. 

He is a moving phenomenon and when he decided to contest for the election but it was the turn of the north he yielded to run as a vice president with Atiku for PDP in 2019. Now, the rotation of the president is supposed to come back to the south but PDP denied him and allowed a northern to emerge as presidential candidate. He then sought a political party that would give him what he wants and follow his policies and he found in Labour party. Labour party been in comatose for years because they are not funded but it is a potential party because it is a Labour party for Nigerian workers in every ward, local government, senatorial districts, state and region. Nigeria workers are everywhere and when you say structure, the people are the structure. Structure is about the people you have on ground.

Peter Obi has a structure; the structure is in the hands of Nigerians. Nigerian youths are spending their money to campaign and I don’t think I have ever seen that Nigerians campaigning without waiting for campaign funds. It is a paradigm shift and that’s commendable. Already the human structures are coming up, people are donating their buildings. 2023 elections would be about personality not political parties.

What is your take on the limited access of youth into political systems and positions? 

I would say power is earned and not given. Poverty has tainted the vision of the youths and they don’t know what they want anymore. I don’t believe that Nigerians have done enough. They need to be more engaged. Remember that the first political party in Nigeria was the Nigerian National Democratic Party(NNDP) by Herbert Macaulay as a youth. We need to start doing something consciously for the Nigerian youths in his 20’s, 30’s and 40 ‘s so that they can achieve something tangible.

The old people may not see anything different because a lot of the Nigerian youths that came up to power were not doing well. The ones that became ministers are not doing well.

They have been disappointing all the way, a lot of youths are even getting worse. They do not want to painstakingly follow the political path of incubation to cook them politically Students Union Government are trying to use specialized number plates, cover plate numbers, blowing sirens, they want to add titles to their names, so instead of leading a befitting change for the country, the youths are trying to copy what the old ones are doing.

The youths we have now do not really have a clear vision of what they want and that is why they have not been gifted any opportunity. The youths should have a revolutionary change of mindset, a mindset reengineering change that this country belongs to them that the old ones are in the departure lounge, they are moving out?