AISHA ABUBAKAR
Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Presidential candidate in the 2019 general election and ADC Presidential aspirant in the race for the 2023 polls, Prof Kingsley Moghalu, on Friday said the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, is a “political calculation”, and not a declaration of religious war.
P.M.EXPRESS reports that Moghalu, who said this via his verified Twitter handle, stated that he is not surprised by the uproar the issue has generated.
“As I said recently to a question on @AriseTV, the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket was intended more as a political calculation than a declaration of “religious war”. Given the sensitivity of religion in Nigeria today, however, it should not surprise us that it’s sparked a storm,” the former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria said.
“It will be tested at the polls. Today’s Nigeria is hardly the one in which MKO Abiola won the Presidential election in 1993 on a Muslim-Muslim ticket. What a difference time makes. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe ran for President in 1979 on a Christian-Christian ticket with Prof Ishaya Audu.”
“Obafemi Awolowo also ran in the same election with the renowned lawyer, Phillip Umeadi, a Christian like him. Shehu Shagari, a Muslim, ran with Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Christian – and won, though by the kin of his teeth for those who remember the 12 and 2/3rd judicial saga.”
“Last last, it is clear that Nigeria’s nationhood trajectory has gone downward rather than upward in the past three decades. Who, or what, will be the real “unifier”? My answer: a fundamental constitutional re-engineering.”