Running mate: Buhari’s love for pastors
In advanced democracies, religious leaders are no less entitled to political beliefs than politicians. The case is not the same in Nigeria. But former Head of State and presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Major General Muhammadu Buhari, has continued to encourage clerics to participate in the electoral process, FELIX NWANERI reports
Former Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari is a man of many parts. To some people, he is a disciplinarian and unrepentant apostle of anti-corruption, but to others, he is a Muslim fundamentalist. But despite the latter’s perception of the Katsina State-born General, he appears to have an inclination for clerics of the Christian faith with the way he has continued to encourage them to participate in the electoral process and possibly governance given the way he has for the second time running picked one of them as his running mate in his bid for the presidency.
The trend started in 2011, when the former military ruler contested the presidential election alongside fiery Lagos preacher and senior pastor of Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, on the platform of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). In the election, Buhari was defeated by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. The defeat, notwithstanding, Buhari proved his electoral worth. He polled about 12 million votes against Jonathan’s 22.4 million with victories in 12, out of the 19 states of the North.
Many had then criticised his choice of Bakare, saying they are two extreme personalities who would find it difficult to blend, but Buhari in his usual unbending nature shunned all entreaties and insisted on his choice. Even when the leadership of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) also insisted that Bakare must sign an undertaking to step down for their candidate as a condition to enter into an alliance with CPC on the presidential poll, Buhari refused.
While the events of 2011 are now history, Buhari, who is contesting the presidential election again in 2015 on the platform of the APC, has equally opted for another Christian cleric, Prof. Yemi Osibajo, as his running mate. Osibajo, who hails from Ogun State like Bakare, is a professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). He is a pastor at the popular Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). He pastors at Olive Tree House of Prayer for All Nations Parish, Banana Island, Lagos. Explaining his choice, Buhari said he picked a man of unquestionable character, a professional and an intellectual, whom he believed would discharge the duties expected of him with utmost diligence.
His words: “The challenging process of rescuing our country and changing Nigeria for good has commenced. One of the first decisions that I have to make is the choice of the vice-presidential candidate and my running mate. “To assist me in this great task of securing Nigeria’s future, I have chosen a man of unimpeachable integrity. He is an excellent professional, a man of faith, a devoted family man and a role model to our fellow countrymen and women.
“He is a professor of law and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. An alumnus of the University of Lagos and the London School of Economics, a prodigious author who has to his credit several books on civil procedure in Nigerian superior courts. The vice-presidential candidate is a friend of the less-privileged, compassionate and zealous in service, a man of uncommon humility,loyal, dependable and selfless patriot.” Though Buhari claimed the choice was his, credit, however, goes to a former Lagos State governor and a national leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Tinubu had claimed that Buhari offered him the position, but he opted for Osibajo, who has remained his long standing and trusted ally, when it became clear that the odds did not favour him. He is a Muslim like Buhari and there is no doubt that a Muslim/Muslim ticket would be a hard sell to Nigerians by the opposition party. So far, Buhari’s preference for the cleric, who served as Lagos Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice under Tinubu between 1999 and 2007, ahead of more popular personalities like the governors of Rivers and Edo states, Chibuike Amaechi and Adams Oshiomhole, has been described by most analysts as a political masterstroke.
To members of this political school of thought, the erudite scholar and motivational speaker, besides being a brilliant legal practitioner whose expertise has been called to play in many legal battles where he made good showings of himself, he is expected to attract the sympathy of not only members of his church for the opposition party, but that of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria. RCCG was started by late Pa Josiah Akindayomi in 1952, but since 1981 when the present General Overseer, Pastor Enoch Adoboye took over, the church has witnessed membership explosion.
At the last count, there are at least about 2,000 parishes of the church across Nigeria. One of RCCG’s programmes, Holy Ghost Service, an all night miracle ser-vice that holds on first Friday of every month at the Redemption Camp along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, records an average 500,000 worshipers. It is this huge population that the APC is likely to leverage on through Osibajo’s candidacy. However, despite this perceived political advantage, there is a political school of thought, which took exception to Osibajo’s emergence, saying his position in the church comes with little or no electoral value.
Members of this political school pointed to the Bakare example. According to them, despite Bakare’s popularity among Christians, he was unable to deliver his home state, Ogun and Lagos where his church’s headquarters is, to the CPC in the 2011 presidential election. In Ogun State, the CPC polled a paltry 17,654 votes against PDP’s 309,177. The result in Lagos showed that PDP polled 1.2 million votes while CPC got 189,983.
To another political school, Osibajo as a religious leader should stay off politics. The argument of this group is that religion and politics are inherently contradictory concepts. According to those who hold this view, while religion teaches love, humility, respect and self-sacrifice, politics on the other hand requires double dealing, backstabbing, surrendering of principles and self-aggrandizement. They further argued that the greatest threat to freedom of religious practice and the purity of religious expression is the mixing of religion and politics.
They premised this position on historical evidence which had shown that clerics with political power quickly pervert their faiths as they bend the spiritual message to meet their secular objectives. But the questions against these backdrops are: Should religious leaders refrain from stepping into the political sphere? In a country made up of diverse religions, is it possible to separate religion from politics? If celebrities could enjoy political expression, can such be denied of religious leaders? The constitution, perhaps, proffers answers to these puzzles.
Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) states: “Every person shall be entitled to assemble freely and associate with other persons, and in particular, he may form or belong to any political party, trade union or any other association for the protection of his interests.” It was against this backdrop that those who saw nothing wrong with Buhari’s preference for clergies, are of the opinion that politics is not bigger than religion, and so, if dabbling into affairs of the state is going to make the difference for the people, religious leaders should be encouraged.
“What is the use of religion? It should be for the poor masses and down trodden. Take a case of Mahatma Gandhi of India. He was a true ‘saint’ who fought for the cause of the poor and tried to uplift them. So, whether any one agrees or not, religion was, and still is the driving force for politics all over the world. To separate them may be the most difficult task,” argued an analyst. Findings by New Telegraph on Saturday on the issue, justified the position.
The considerable political influence by Muslim clerics in countries like Iran; political dominance of the Hindu Nationalist Party in India despite the fact that the country is a secular state and most recently, the pressure by the Philippines Catholic Church leaders on their government to abolish the death penalty, are typical examples. It was on these grounds that the APC camp dismissed the perception on Osibajo’s electoral value. To members of this camp, the impact the RCCG pastor will make on the party in the presidential election would not be determined by his personality but the political structure behind him.
Tinubu, who propped him, they said, controls the politics of the South- West, and he is expected to ride on the former governor’s structure. They further argued that Osibajo was not chosen to appeal to his church, but due to the value he would add to an APC presidency, should the party win the election. Besides these, there is the belief that the South-West, where he hails from would be the battleground in the 2015 presidential poll.
The zone has over 15 million votes. Buhari is from the North-West and is expected to garner most of the votes in the zone as well as those of the North-East and North Central, while President Jonathan is sure of votes in his native South-South and neighbouring South-East. This means that the South-West votes would be up for grabs. This perhaps explains why the APC opted for a vice presidential candidate from the zone. To some analysts, it would have amounted to political suicide by the opposition party if it had looked elsewhere taking its strength in the zone into consideration.
It was also argued that though the General Overseer of the RCCG (Pastor Adeboye), unlike some of his colleagues, is not known to have any political leaning, there is no way he would abandon his own. Osibajo is said to be among the top pastors of the church close to Adeboye, whose influence is beyond members of his church. An indication to this emerged last Friday during the just concluded 2014 edition of the Holy Ghost congress, an annual gathering of the church, when Adeboye directed that all RCCG faithful should come to church on first Sunday of 2015 (January 4) before he and other pastors in the church will release the New Year’s blessings.
The cleric who displayed his voters’ card, said: “Every eligible voter should ensure they get their voter’s card since this is the only ticket that would ensure that they vote in the candidate of their choice. Nigerians must begin to realise that their vote is their power, and it must be the concern of every Christian to decide who rules them as they are under covenant obligations to respect and pray for their leaders.”
While many misconstrued the directive as a tacit endorsement of Osibajo’s candidacy, the church has officially come out to declare that it does not dabble in politics. “We are a mission and we do not meddle in politics,” RCCG wrote on its Twitter handle, while urging Nigerians to be wary of fictitious and misleading social media accounts dragging its name into the murky waters of politics. Chief Ralph Obioha, a chieftain of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), in an interview with New Telegraph on Saturday, applauded Buhari’s choice of a clergy as a running mate.
“If we want to be honest, there is a very serious polarisation in today’s Nigeria under religious line and Buhari has shown certain accommodation of such sensibility. So, picking a pastor at least demonstrates that he is on right thinking jacket as far as Nigeria things are concerned. Nigerians are aware that three names were given to him to pick from and he must have evaluated the credentials of those three. And picking a pastor has demonstrated that he is sensitive to some of the accusations that detractors have put on him that he is of religious intolerance mode.
At least, he has dispelled that by the choice he made,” he said Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife is former governor of Anambra State said Buhari is over-emphasising religion with his choice. He, however, dispelled insinuation that Osibajo does not have electoral value. Ezeife said: “There is no way we can say a man of God does not have electoral value. A pastor can have electoral value more than myself because he may be more political. For choosing a pastor as running mate, Buhari has shown that he over- emphasis religion. Why should an ordinary man go and pick a pastor? He should pick an ordinary Christian.
Why should an ordinary Muslim, not an Imam pick a pastor and insist on picking pastor? My prayer is that God’s will be done.” National Publicity Secretary of Yoruba Unity Forum (YUF), Dr Kunle Olajide, said Osibajo is a right choice for Buhari. According to him, “I think Buhari made a right choice by picking a pastor as his running mate. In the first instance, religion has become a very sensitive issue in Nigeria and for Buhari to pick a foremost man of God as his running mate at least cease to debunked the story that fly around that he is a religious bigot. I think it is a wise choice. Prof. Yemi Osibajo is a first class academic and disciplined professional.
So, I think Buhari made a right choice. “Talking about whether pastors have electoral value or not, it depends on what we mean by electoral value. Where we are in Nigeria today, what we used to refer to as electoral value or electoral asset is no longer tenable because all those who had electoral value had been voted in and they had disappointed us woefully.
So, I think this is high time for us to change our sense of appreciating people. Now, we need to look at antecedents of whoever is picked, not electoral value.” As the debate on the relevance or otherwise of Buhari’s preference for Christian clerics as running mates rages, an incontrovertible fact is that religion remains a driving force for the masses, as affinity exists between them and their leaders though the real danger is with those who choose to ferment bigotry. No doubt, Buhari’s preference has been hinged on the perception that he is a Muslim fundamentalist. And picking a devoted Christian running mate is to dissuade the perception of being a religious bigot.