By Wole Olujobi
Never since the Lebanese conflagration has a modern world been confronted with the religious nationalism being promoted in Nigeria by desperate politicians who value ambition for self-glorification far above the ethos that safeguard peace and security for national unity and development.
In the last presidential election, Dr Peter Obi of the Labour Party and his cohorts of reckless political evangelists, in their desperation for power, played a dangerous religious card pitting moslems against Christians.
In churches rose troubling religious sentiments and malicious sermons at vigils being promoted curiously by the elites, who openly promoted religious discord because of political contest. It was a period that Nigerians saw the marriage of a female pastor being put asunder by her fellow clerics in cassock. Completely, Pastor (Senator) Oluremi Tinubu was disowned by her fellow pastors in the Vineyard of God. The clergy, in rebellious animosity, lose the colour and temper of their trade as they distanced themselves from Pastor Remi Tinubu over her husband’s presidential bid because Tinubu ran on Muslim-muslim ticket.
But reasonable and ordinary Nigerians rejected them at polls to vote for peace and growth, citing the most peaceful June 12, 1993 presidential poll in Nigeria featuring two moslems (the late MKO Abiola and Ambassador Babagana Kingibe) who won the polls on the ticket of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), but which the sphinx of the Nigerian politics would not allow. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Alhaji Kashim Shettima repeated the feat in the 2023 presidential election to the chagrin of the Nigeria’s political mafiosi.
Two years after that salvation political contest won by President Tinubu, one of the remnants of the totems of the old order adept at desperate pursuit of power, Babachir David Lawal, is afield as a one-man Christian militia promoting religious antics that can stoke the cauldron of war reminiscent of the Beruit theatre of war in a desperate enterprise purely motivated by selfish pursuit of power.
Recall that in the Christian neighbourhood of Achrafieh in eastern Beirut in Lebanon, one neighbourhood watch initiative formed to reassure residents worried about the crime rate led to the formation of a private militia named Soldiers of God. Soldiers of God is a far-right group made up primarily of young working-class men who see themselves as “guardian angels”, patrolling the streets at night to keep the community safe.
The rise of Soldiers of God had at the time raised fears that Achrafieh would join this trend, evoking parallels with the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990) when the state collapsed, as militants controlled the streets, and Beirut was ideologically divided into the Christian east and Muslim west.
In his reaction to President Tinubu’s presence at the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican, Lawal had railed at the President, saying that his presence in Rome reinforced the insult of Muslim-Muslim ticket on the Christian population in Nigeria. He also had harsh words for Tinubu’s supporters, accusing them of being “blind and deaf” to the alleged collapse of economy and insecurity in the country.
Like it is always the case with unconscionably desperate partisans, Lawal’s present position sharply contradicts his earlier stance when he was one of Tinubu’s doormen and lackeys. Lawal it was who as both the Napoleon and Squealer of the ‘Animal Farm’ parroted the need for the Tinubu presidency when Tinubu seemed to be facing the cold shoulders of those who should carry his banners.
Like a consummate salesman, Lawal, in jingles and bells tied to the waist, raced across Nigeria, selling Tinubu and his benevolence, explaining in details how Tinubu single-handely ensured President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory at polls and so he must also be supported to clinch the presidency.
But for a man in the cusp of political survival, there is a sense in which a promoter of an ideal can also be the undertaker to topple the very purport of his vision. This is where survival instincts, no matter how base, rule the roost. Napoleon and his hatchet crony Squealer are my witnesses!
Where then is Lawal’s integrity in his enterprise as a frontliner in a cause to now play the spoiler among the conclave of vicious fowls he is rallying to make their heaps in the morning and get them scattered in the evening?
No doubt, Lawal’s desperate antic to hit the power loop again has its roots in power loss fuelled by an alleged inappropriate conduct as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation when grasshoppers reportedly grazed through the national security cash vault and deposited the hay in private feedlots.
For Lawal, the quickest way to political rehabilitation is to stoke religious sentiment at a time that even in the countries where Islam is practised in the most strict, raw fundamentalism, the leaders in those countries are recorded as forging alliances with the Vatican and Christians in general.
We read about the immediate past Pope Francis visiting mosques in Indonesia to meet moslem leaders to chart a course for peace. He was in the United Arabs Emirates on February 4, 2019 to forge friendship with the muslim world, including a tour of key locations in Abu Dhabi, both religious and political, marking the end of a two-day conference on the “Human Fraternity Meeting” to discuss the importance of tolerance.
Pope Francis also met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq, visited Muslim leaders in the Gulf-kingdom of Bahrain, and on December 2, 2014, the late Pope in Turkey called on political and religious leaders across the Muslim world to condemn violence done in the name of Islam.
Even while alive, Jesus Christ’s best friends were sinners and tormentors of His Father’s Kingdom (Mary Magdalen, Baraba, Zacchaeus and others, and later, Cornelius the Centurion). But the likes of Lawal are now telling us that they are more Christians than Jesus, Peter, James, John and Pope, and so Christians should have nothing to do with Muslims!
It is ridiculous and a pity that these pseudo Christians have allowed their souls to become inane and so cannot see anything beyond the Tinubu phobia. For sure,Tinubu was not the only muslim at Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration. But then it was convenient for a supposedly educated Lawal to stoke fractious religious sentiment to fuel his political thought in order to grab power at the time Tinubu is already defeating the terror of the Boko Haram insurgency, which began in July 2009 when the militant Islamist and jihadist rebel group started an armed rebellion against the government of Nigeria.
Between 2011 and 2023, the human costs in Boko Haram attacks recorded thousands of deaths in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger with Nigeria being the most affected.
In 2019 alone, the economic cost of terrorism in Nigeria covered 2.4 percent of the country’s GDP, as the nation had the highest terrorism threat level in Africa. Also, Nigeria’s political, economic, and social instabilities have led to violence and deaths through attacks on both civilian and military targets.
Curiously, the insecurity and starvation that Lawal is accusing Tinubu of not addressing were compounded by alleged misappropriation of security funds to fight Boko Haram whose criminal activities caused flooding ravaging agricultural production in the North. The money was allegedly diverted for personal use by Lawal’s company when he was Secretary to the Government of the Federation; the alleged infraction that led to his suspension by President Muhammadu Buhari on April 19, 2017 before he was officially relieved of all duties on October 30, 2017 after a Senate investigation discovered in its May 2017 report that funds for clearing weeds in the North-Eastern areas threatened by Boko Haram to prevent flooding had allegedly been diverted to a company allegedly set up by Lawal.
Like in Lebanon, Lawal is promoting the Sainthood of the Order of Armagedon with himself as the Pontiff of the Cathedral of Chaos. And just like the “soldiers of God” in Beruit that later turned the streets to the theatres of wars, Lawal’s gambling to seize the levers of power through Tinubu’s bashing and promotion of religious strife has the tramping of soldiers of the Belzebubs set for street conflagration.
Nigeria has seen enough of bloodbath on the streets instigated by desperate politicians armed with deadly religious missiles to wreak havoc on the peace-loving Nigerians.
President Tinubu has recorded high marks in degrading the capabilities of the terror groups in their acts of sabotage against Nigeria’s economy and her human capital.
Both the Christian and moslem worlds have seen the benefits of keeping the peace as an essential element of factor of production, including service economy, to make progress. Reckless and desperate politicians should spare a thought for millions of Nigerians who desire peace to lead and live a purposeful life. Those who contributed to the sorry state of Nigeria cannot assault our brains with dubious nationalism that seeks to protect personal interest. Nationalism inspired by emergency and unconscionable soldiering for God to climb to power is unedifying in both form and content.
*Igirabata Wole Olujobi, former Ekiti State Deputy Director of Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Committee, writes from Ado-Ekiti
