From Ighomuaye Lucky, Benin
An Edo-based human rights activist, Pastor Moses Onodua, has said the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) can only prove that they are against the Muslim-Muslim ticket by voting against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, Ahmed Bola Tinubu in the forthcoming presidential election.
Pastor Onodua made the comment Thursday while fielding questions from reporters in Benin City.
The activist said that APC as a party has made its choice of who flies its ticket and nobody can question it and that it now behooves on the Christian bodies to decide whether they are going to mobilize their followers to vote for the party which flies the Muslim-Muslim ticket in the forthcoming election or not.
“My advice for Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN)… is very simple; APC have made their choice of what is best for them, then, CAN and PFN should also make their choice. Then, we will now test our might in the 2023 general elections”, he said.
Onodua said the APC did not put the interest of other religious groups into consideration in its quest of getting its presidential running mate knowing that Nigeria is a secular country.
“According to statistics, Nigeria is dominated by Christians and Muslims. I don’t have the figures now but by some projections that I was made to understand that, as at today, the population of Christians are more than muslims in Nigeria.
“So, in other words, Nigeria is not a Muslim country, neither can it be a Christian country.
“So, Nigeria is a secular country. So, if you want to aspire to become the leader of Nigeria, you must do everything humanly possible even though it is not constitutionally enshrined, to make sure that you carry the two major religious groups along in your decisions in order to appear to be fair to everyone in this country.
“But what the APC has done, is that they have now decided that they don’t have the interest of the entire nation at heart; rather they are concerned with a particular segment of Nigerian society, which is the Muslim community.
“So, they have decided to please them. So, we will see what comes out of the ticket, 2023 is around the corner,” he said.
He accused the APC of polarizing the country and also indirectly trying to Islamise the country.
“But let me make it abundantly clear, the APC Muslim-Muslim ticket is dead on arrival.
“It cannot fly because what the APC is trying to do, is to polarize the country, to divide the country.
“That ticket gives us an idea that what people have been talking about since during these years of Buhari’s administration, the Islamisation of Nigeria is actually the truth.
“That means, from the onset, this Buhari’s administration has been laying a foundation to Islamize Nigeria, to make sure that Nigeria becomes a 100 per cent a Muslim country which is not going to be possible.
“It may have happened in other countries because while studying church histories, I read in a place that, the present day Turkey and some other Muslim countries today, were once 100 per cent Christians countries but today, they are now more or less 95 per cent Muslim, some 85 per cent Muslim that were once 100 per cent Christians.
“That is exactly the same agenda that Buhari’s government and this APC is trying to impose on Nigerians which will not fly,” he said.