Former House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara has been slammed by a group championing the rights of Muslims in Nigeria, Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC).
MURIC has slammed Dogara over his condemnation of same faith Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress.
The presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu and his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima are Muslims.
Dogara recently urged Christians in Nigeria not to waste their votes by voting for the Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket of the APC in the 2023 election.
The lawmaker and some other Nigerians have condemned the Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket of the party, describing it as unfair and an insult to Christians in Nigeria.
But reacting to Dogara’s call on Christians not to vote for the APC in the 2023 presidential election, MURIC asked why the lawmaker and others rejected Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a Christian at the APC presidential primary election and chose a Muslim if not because of their selfishness.
Signed by the Chairman of the Bauchi Chapter of the group, Idrees Gambo, MURIC, in a statement said in part, “While this is a subject matter that should be on the lips of all Nigerians, embarrassingly we busy ourselves with winning elections at all cost after which the power elites deploy institutional prerogatives with reckless abandon as if leadership is a zero-sum game. This of course, without any reference let alone commitment to nation building.”
“The game from the beginning seems very clear to people like Dogara, when they decided at the expense of religion to support the candidature of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu despite the presence of the Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo who is a fellow Christian from the same South West, because in his political mathematics as Chief Chuba Okadigbo will prefer to put it, at that time religion was secondary to their personal ambition because if you permit me, the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is more important to that of the Vice President in any country.
“In my opinion, the question of the Muslim-Muslim Ticket is purely a child of necessity in today’s arrangement and nobody appears to have captured it without sentiment better than the former Governor of Abia State, Senator Orji Uzo Kalu, when he posited, in essence, that the aim of any political party is to win election and our reality in Nigeria is that no party can afford to put two (2) minorities on the same ticket, that Tinubu is a Muslim minority from the South and it will be political suicide for him to take a minority Christian from the North.
“Although I understand the need to hide under the guise of ‘nation building’ by Rt. Hon. Dogara, in driving home the message of his disappointment and his being snubbed by Bola Tinubu in the choice of his running mate, but what I cannot still comprehend was the choice of a religious platform to send such a political message.
“No wonder Karl Max refers to religion as the opium of the masses. It is obvious that if we just remove our political class, ordinary Nigerians will easily blend with one another irrespective of any existing dichotomy (religion, tribe, region, state, etc.), which tends to divide them today. Our problem over the years has remained that of divide and rule by our leaders at all levels.”
