First, a few questions. Why have the charges of religious bigotry against Vice President Yemi Osinbajo not gained traction in the mainstream Nigerian media, despite mounting evidence from the man’s own speeches and actions? Why has the Vice President escaped media and political scrutiny for stuffing over 90 per cent of his appointments with members of a single religious sect when at about the same time the media have continued to chant “unbalanced appointments” against his boss?
The answers to these questions are to be found within Nigeria’s media and political cultures and the lessons they highlight must be learned if Nigeria must move forward under any structural arrangement. A media culture in which one man is vilified for doing a wrong, but another man escapes media spotlight for doing the exact same thing cannot be said to be sound, and the soundness of a media system is directly correlational with the soundness of the political system in any given society.
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So far since 1999, hundreds of Nigerians from every part of this country and from every religious persuasion have aspired for the presidency of Nigeria from many different political platforms. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, only two of them—Buhari and Osinbajo—have been accused of religious bigotry in the context of their political aspirations. Not even religious clerics like Chris Okotie who actually floated a political platform, Fresh Democratic Party, while still a pastor, to run for the highest office in the land were overtly associated with their religious faiths in a political sense. Thus, accusations of religious fanaticism at the time of running for office is one thing President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo have in common, beyond being members of the same political party or working together at the presidency.
Yet, there the similarities end. While a whole corpus of writing and speech has emerged in Nigeria’s political media about Buhari’s perceived theocratic politics, almost all of it without much evidence, Osinbajo, a man who is not only a theologian, but has proclaimed his theocratic politics publicly, has gone largely unscathed in the same media. This, in a nutshell, is how Nigeria’s political journalism has always been practiced, but a little background might help make the case.
About twenty-one years ago in mid-2001, or thereabouts, a story surfaced in the THISDAY newspaper in which Buhari was reported to have enjoined Muslims to vote only for Muslim candidates in the then upcoming 2003 elections. All hell broke loose afterwards, and did for long. In fact, as Malam Garba Shehu, now Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Buhari, but not much associated with him then, wrote more than 10 years later in a November 14, 2012 article in the Premium Times, that although Buhari had no known interest in politics at the time he supposedly made the speech in 2002, “looking at all that has happened from the time he chose to dive into the murky waters of politics to his repeated contest for the Presidency, terrible misrepresentation of his speech continues to be the single most important threat to Buhari’s bid for the Presidency of this country”.
Of course, Buhari would later deny saying that, and to none other than then Reverend Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, now the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese who, in turn, wrote supportively of Buhari on the issue in an article in the Weekly Trust Newspaper of July 6-12, 2001. But it didn’t matter, Buhari was vilified almost every day in the media for wanting to “Islamise Nigeria” throughout the long years he was a candidate for president from 2002 to 2015. Indeed, while Buhari still somehow made it to the presidency, I think he has never really recovered from those years of negative press. That statement became an albatross that, in a sense, still hangs over Buhari’s political neck to date as far as mainstream Nigerian media is concerned. It was, in fact, the only reason why Buhari had to pick a pastor in three out of his five presidential runs, and why Osinbajo ever became vice president.
Meanwhile, the man who sees his position as Nigeria’s Number Citizen almost entirely as a religious destiny (“manifest destiny” in his own words) and as an opportunity for the elevation of one religious group above all others in the country has not been subjected to even a frown in the media. For example, at a meeting with Christian Apostolic Leaders in 2016, as reported in the Vanguard Newspaper of November 4, 2016, Osinbajo had this to say about his vice presidency and the presidential bid that would follow: “An APC National Leader who had served when he was governor was interested in putting me forward as the running mate of President Muhammadu Buhari in consensus with other national leaders of the party.
“I was a product of this system. The church was reluctant and I understood why the church was reluctant. The church was looking at the head of the ticket (President). This is our first opportunity. This is our first shot at it. We need to maximize it and do the best we can. I think what my nomination and appointment have done is that they have opened the door for us. We can do it and we can be influential in doing it.”
My argument, then, is that if anyone with a name like Atiku Abubakar or Bukola Saraki, or Muhammadu Buhari has made a statement such as the above in the context of Islam and politics in Nigeria to a group of Muslim leaders, their political careers will be over the following day. The same Nigerian media that ignored Osinbajo’s seamless fusion of church and state, the same media that have ignored his appointment of only leading pastors or members of his church to key positions of state would make sure their political careers are over. The media would discover its voice and be screaming secularism and what not if any of the persons above dared to say anything even half as scandalous as Osinbajo’s.
In other words, the Nigerian media does not understand that religious extremism can also take a Christian colouration, something well understood in Europe and elsewhere. It is always the Muslim or Northern political leader or public official who must demonstrate their Nigerian-ness, and who must publicly proclaim and display their secularist tendencies. Christian or southern political leaders do not have to carry such burdens in Nigerian politics. They can do literally all they want in relation to religion and politics, and no one will notice because the media won’t see it as wrong. They can make all their political appointments from only their own small corner of the country, as many heads of federal agencies and departments have done repeatedly and routinely, and it won’t be an issue in the media.
But once the shoe turns on the other leg, all hell will break loose in the media. This is why Osinbajo’s over-religionisation of politics in Nigeria has come under scrutiny. And this is why it must be called out not just on social media, but also in the mainstream political media in the country, even if by only a few lone voices.
Concluded.
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