The demand or, more correctly, the happenstance of a Muslim-Muslim ticket is by no means a negation of the Federal character principle in the popularly elective political arena, where it will actually have made no sense at all; but then neither is the current campaign against it an indication of the superior sensitivity of the campaigners.
It will appear that of these campaigners, there are at least three groups that will have reason to oppose the emergence of a Muslim-Muslim ticket, especially the one pairing General Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in the All Progressives Congress (APC).
One, politicians from the South West who are uncomfortable with the fact of Tinubu as Yoruba Leader may wish to shoot down a promising proposition that looks like the winning combination. And if Yoruba leadership is still a contested proposition, the vice-presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria going to Tinubu will have put a definitive end to it. It is therefore little wonder and perhaps not for nothing that the call against such a ticket first emanated from the South West.
Two, opposition to a Muslim-Muslim ticket may be an idea advanced by those who wish to oppose a particular candidature without specifying which or even appearing to do so. Thus, those opposed to a Buhari presidency will see their cause served by opposition to APC’s reputed ticket. And they have good reasons. Despite Buhari’s soaring popularity in the North, the ticket will need an Asiwaju to make it click in the South West; and in spite of Tinubu’s political leadership of the Yoruba block, a ticket with him without Buhari is a probably nonstarter in the North. Those with a candidate in the North other than Buhari and those with a candidate in the South other than Tinubu will oppose the emergence of the Muslim-Muslim ticket on account of their own preferred candidates; but, in doing so, they may wish to hide this behind some nebulous insistence on sensitivity to Christian feelings.
Three, those interested in a PDP victory within the APC—and there are many of them—and without will, for obvious reasons, oppose a Buhari-Tinubu ticket because they instinctively know it will be the pair to beat. But there is a paradox here, because it appears they don’t even believe in their own logic. If it is true, as former aviation minister Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has been saying that such a ticket will not win, the government and its supporters should have been encouraging its emergence so that Jonathan can easily coast to victory. But as we have seen, they are busy doing everything to prevent it.
It is perhaps no coincidence that less than a week after originating, making and publicising the Muslim-Muslim accusation against the APC and seeking to make an Everest out of a Mariana Trench, and even reviving the Janjaweed and Boko Haram appellations, Fani-Kayode was reportedly back where he belonged—in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), on behalf of which, it is now safe to presume, he made the accusation in the first place.
It was a pity he couldn’t even wait for the seed of his pet project to germinate and cause the expected—and intended—havoc within the ranks of the opposition. An embarrassing cut like this, from within, will have caused greater pain, festered and lingered on for longer and drawn a lot more blood than the ill-disguised tantrums of a departing partisan mole of a political opponent.
But what really is wrong with the Muslim-Muslim ticket that they hailed in 1993 but over which they were today raising so much hell? Some, like Fani-Kayode, have said that fielding a Muslim-Muslim ticket will offend the Christian community in Nigeria, as if it was the Christian community of Dahomey that elected MKO Abiola on June 12, 1993. At any event, he hasn’t shown how, and it is indeed difficult to see what, or how any, right of Christians will be violated by such a ticket. The primary objective of a presidential or any kind of ticket is not to please or offend Christians or Muslims: it is to win an election. If Buhari and Tinubu pair up and stand for election on the presidential ticket, they will not have infringed on any person’s rights. And they will win. They will only have infringed on people’s rights if, after the election, they favour their faith at the expense of other faiths.
Accepting this is not just a question of mere political correctness nor is insisting on it in today’s Nigeria being blind to realism; because something can be right without necessarily being realistic, and it can also be unrealistic without being wrong.
At any event, APC cannot, and nor can any other party, please the adherents of all religions, or even please all the adherents of any one religion. And it should never be its purpose to try to do so. There are Muslims and Christians in other parties—in the PDP, for instance—and they are no less devout adherents of their faiths; and, presumably, nothing APC does will please them or make them approve of it as a party. In view of this, should APC then disband in order not to offend them?
If only we can drop our religious prejudices, there are many personalities in this country today who, out of fear of God or possession of principled humanism, are capable of leading this nation out of pettiness; and making us forget about the silliness of some of the permutations of balancing a ticket. Isn’t it time this nation went beyond our current lamentable chauvinism? And what a pity it is that advancement in our socio-political development is acknowledged, accepted and celebrated only when it can be exploited on the altar of ethnicity. Why should a Muslim-Muslim ticket be acceptable to the nation at one time and not be acceptable at another? What we should really be looking for in our future leaders should be competence, positive honesty, public spiritedness and capacity for justice.
And today, if Alhaji Balarabe Musa were to pair up with Alhaji Muhammadu Maishanu, that personification of honesty and integrity in Bauchi, on the presidential ticket of some improbable political party, that would be a ticket everyone should drop everything to campaign for, even though both of them are Muslim, and they are as much Northern as they are inflexible paragons of probity. They inspire such confidence in people and possess such contentment as will shame a man; and they are incapable of committing injustice; and with either of them, no atom of public resources entrusted to him will ever get missing till the Day of Judgment.
Or if Sunday Awoniyi were alive, a presidential ticket with him and His Grace John Cardinal Onaiyekan—if the Pontiff would allow—would have been the ticket to support despite the fact that both of them were/are Christian—the latter a Catholic cardinal, the former a late, un-canonised Baptist saint—and not only would they have been from the North, they would have been from the same Kogi state; and both would have been Yoruba! That would have been a ticket of competence and God-consciousness every patriotic Nigerian—Muslim, Christian, pagan, agnostic or atheist—in full possession of his senses ought to support.
And if one found a ticket of Professor Sam Aluko and Genera Ishola Williams presented as presidential and vice presidential aspirants, who wouldn’t have voted for them? Both were/are competent, Christian, God-fearing and Yoruba; and in their hands the nation will be safe and the economy efficiently managed. What more can we ask of our leaders?
As we can see, the best qualification for a president is the possession of the qualities required by the moment—competence, integrity, honesty, team spirit, public spiritedness and ability to lead by example; and for the vice president, it is his competence and faithfulness so that he can succeed and be seen as a good future president.
For capacity to win, look to their popularity, breadth of appeal and state-carrying power on polling day. And important, not for winnability but for the stability of the ticket, is their compatibility. No doubt, the factors to look for in all aspirants on a ticket are many but the most important is certainly not their religion but their competence.
While at one time or the other, issues of race, religion, gender, political ideology and ethnicity have been important considerations in deciding the composition of leadership and in the political development of some of the advanced democracies that Nigeria is copying today, these were only for short periods before they were discarded. For instance, in almost all American presidential elections before the Civil War, a Northerner was always paired with a Southerner; but this regional balancing, on account of its sacrifice of merit and competence, was discarded right after the civil war. And because of its inherently undemocratic and even antidemocratic antecedents, ticket balancing with regard to ideology was discontinued in 1970. Now, if any of these issues becomes important, it is only incidental to the candidates’ capacity to draw the crowds. And now even after they have come to the bridge, Nigerians fear to cross it.
