Arewa Coalition for Good Governance (ACGG) has said the hardline positions of former Secretary to the Federal Government Babachir Lawal, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara and Adamawa lawmaker, Senator Ishaku Abbo, over the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), are based on selfish interests. According to the Coalition, their anger was based on the premise that none of them was picked as running mate.
“At a time when critical stakeholders of the APC should be working for unity and progress ahead of the 2023 general elections, they have decided to deploy religious sentiments as a weapon of war to discourage Christians from Tinubu/Shettima,” the coalition said.
A statement by one of its leaders in Kaduna State, Elder Peter Auta, reads: “Nigerians, especially the electorate, are wise enough to know that whipping religious sentiments against any candidate is not the solution to the challenges of insecurity, dwindling economy, insurgency, high unemployment, bad governance and other problems militating against progress and development of Nigeria.
“The Holy Bible gave Christians the mandate to pray for leaders, anything out of this is not only unhealthy, but retrogressive. This is why, among several other reasons, Christian leaders in various churches decided to speak against the divisive move by our brothers to create a religious crack in the polity ahead of the 2023 elections.
“Instead of holding nocturnal meetings to fight the issue of Muslim -Muslim Ticket, we expected them to spend energy on talking about how to contribute their quota to finding solutions to the plethora of problems that have served as a cog in the wheel of progress in the last 20 years.
“Babachir and Dogara could be the ones working to overheat the polity and destroy same party that gave them political relevance, we hold the view that this is nothing but mere selfish interest of the spent forces which should be rejected. Everyone knows that both Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima are not religious bigots, so they should know that whipping up religious sentiments against them won’t work.
“We are urging Christians to shun Babachir, Dogara and Senator Abbo’s divisive strategies, and vote candidates of their choice regardless of religion and tribal backgrounds. The most important thing for Nigerians now is come out during the elections and vote good leaders based on merit, experience and records of performance.”