Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, spokesperson of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), has said politicians are playing a game with faith, future and intelligence of Nigerians.
The NEF spokesperson said this when he featured on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
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“The politicians are playing a game with the faith, intelligence and future of our people. Religious balance becomes a factor only during elections. If religion was such a dominant factor in terms of how Muslims or Christians live all the time, we would be fighting each other all the day. Every single day, we will be fighting because I dint get anything because I’m a Muslim.”
Baba-Ahmed added that every time politics comes up, politicians use religion to reach out for power.
He said, “Politicians use faith and other forms of identity politics to reach for power and it is becoming very clear and clearer that every time, politics come, religion comes up and it creates this idea that Nigerians will fight because the Vice President is not a Christian or a Muslim… we would not fight because if you go down in history, there is not a single thing that any Christian has benefited from the times when either Christian was a president, or a Christian was a vice president. There is nothing that a Muslim has benefited from because the president is a Muslim, but when you hear them talk now, it’s as if its central to your being a Muslim or your being a Christian.”
Baba-Ahmed highlighted that politicians target religion for their own interest, forgetting that ordinary Nigerians don’t really care about that.
“Politicians are specifically targetted at these factors that is giving a few of them certain advantages. Christianity does not suffer because the president is not a Christian.”
“Ordinary Nigerians don’t consider the faith of leaders in the way we live. We have been taught some terrible lessons. Religious politics but have abandoned the people who they share the same faith and I think people are wiser now. The North doesn’t belong to Muslims, it belongs to Muslims and Christians and if a political party is choosing to field a Northerner because it believes he’s the most competent person to get a ticket, why not?”
