Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
History does not always announce itself with drama. Sometimes it arrives quietly, in a press conference, in a name read out before cameras, in a decision that a ruling party has calculated the public will absorb and forget. The announcement of a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket by the All Progressives Congress in 2023 was that kind of moment. Quiet in its delivery. Catastrophic in its meaning. It was a moment wrapped in calm presentation but loaded with consequences that would ripple across Nigeria’s political, social, and economic fabric long after the applause had faded.
It was not a miscalculation. It was not political haste. It was a deliberate declaration that the religious complexity of over 200 million Nigerians was an inconvenience to be managed, not a diversity to be honoured. It reduced a carefully balanced national arrangement into a narrow political gamble. Nigeria has been paying for that declaration every single day since May 2023, and the cost has extended beyond political alienation into economic hardship and deepening distrust among citizens.
The Insult Before the Injury
Nigeria’s constitutional architecture, its post-civil-war framework of national reconciliation, and every honest blueprint for stable federal governance rest on a single non-negotiable premise: no religion, region, or ethnicity should monopolise the commanding heights of federal power. That principle is not decorative; it is foundational to national stability and peaceful coexistence.
The Tinubu-Shettima ticket did not strain that premise. It abolished it.
When Kashim Shettima was announced as running mate, the message to over 90 million Nigerian Christians was unambiguous: your inclusion in this project is ornamental. It signalled that balance could be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. The Christian Association of Nigeria responded with rare institutional fury, formally condemning the ticket as a violation of Nigeria’s federal character principles and a direct provocation to the country’s fragile religious coexistence. CAN’s position was not emotional. It was constitutional. And it was ignored.
That the APC overrode the collective voice of Nigerian Christianity to secure its ticket reveals how little inclusion matters when power is the prize. It exposes a hierarchy where victory is prioritised above unity and dominance above balance.
The Hypocrisy That Defines the APC
What followed was more insulting than the ticket itself. APC apologists fanned across every platform to argue that religion should not matter in governance , that Nigerians should judge candidates on competence, not faith. They attempted to rewrite the rules after benefiting from the very divisions they once exploited.
The audacity of that argument deserves to be stated plainly.
This was the same party machinery that spent years mobilising voters across the North on explicitly religious grounds. This was the same political network that routinely framed opposition as an attack on Islam. This was the same apparatus that weaponised identity to manufacture loyalty and neutralise scrutiny of its governance record. It cultivated identity as a tool of political consolidation, only to dismiss it when it became inconvenient.
Having won elections on the back of religious mobilisation, it then told Nigerian Christians that religion was irrelevant when they protested their exclusion. Religion matters to the APC when it serves the APC. It stops mattering the moment its choices cause legitimate offence. That contradiction is not accidental; it is strategic.
This is not a religious problem. It is a leadership integrity problem. And Nigeria elected it into the presidency.
The Bill Arrived Quickly
Governance by exclusion produces policy by exclusion. This is no longer theory. It is grocery receipts, fuel costs, and collapsing bank balances. It is the daily struggle of Nigerians confronting policies disconnected from lived realities.
The naira fell from about 460 to the dollar at handover to beyond 1,600 — an implosion that erased savings and incomes overnight. Petrol subsidy removal, announced on inauguration day with no safety net, drove food and transport costs beyond the reach of ordinary households. Inflation became not just a statistic but a lived experience of hardship.
The Nigerian Communications Commission then approved a 50 per cent telecommunications tariff increase in early 2025, further burdening citizens already weakened by inflation and constraining a sector once celebrated as Nigeria’s economic success story. Communication, once a symbol of progress, became another weight on struggling Nigerians.
When Nigerians protested, the administration responded with deflection. Redirect to ethnicity. Invoke religion. Frame critics as enemies. A government that excluded half the country at formation lacks the moral framework to answer the whole country in crisis. It was not built for that purpose.
What Genuine Inclusion Produced
The contrast with Atiku Abubakar is not rhetorical. It is historical.
Atiku is a Muslim. He has never concealed this. But his political identity has never been reducible to his faith. Across multiple election cycles, his alliances, coalition-building, and leadership choices have reflected Nigeria’s religious and regional diversity. He has done this not for optics, but from a clear understanding that a country as complex as Nigeria can only be governed through genuine inclusion.
His record demonstrates what that philosophy produces. As Vice-President from 1999 to 2007, he drove the liberalisation of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector, connecting millions to opportunity and global commerce. The economy expanded significantly. The EFCC was established. Paris Club debt was exited. Foreign investment returned to a country once considered uninvestable.
These are not campaign promises. They are verifiable entries in Nigeria’s economic history ,documented achievements that stand in contrast to present realities.
2027 Is the Answer.
The African Democratic Congress and the coalition forming around Atiku’s 2027 candidacy represent a direct repudiation of the exclusion that defined the Muslim-Muslim ticket. The combined opposition vote in 2023 already exceeded the winning total. The numbers for change exist. What remains is the will to use them.
The Christian communities of the North, voters of the South-West, citizens of the Middle Belt, and Nigerians across religious lines who rejected sectarian politics together form a majority that no manipulation can defeat , if they act with unity and purpose.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket made a statement: Nigeria’s diversity is a burden. Atiku’s candidacy offers the answer: Nigeria’s diversity is its greatest strength.
A government that excludes you at formation cannot represent you in operation.
In 2027, Nigeria must choose a president built for the whole country.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B ,
Director General ,
The Narrative Force
