By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Millions of Nigerians have by now watched the videoclip of Vice President Namadi...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Millions of Nigerians have by now watched the videoclip of
Vice President Namadi Sambo’s disturbing anti-Christian tirade during a
campaign speech in Niger State in which he basically declared the All Progressives’
Congress as a Christian Party with a token Muslim presidential candidate, and
the People’s Democratic Party as the Muslim party with only a token Christian
presidential candidate. If you haven’t watched it yet, watch it below. It’s trending wildly on Nigerian social media circles.
“We want to call your attention to people who bring
religion to politics. In PDP, if you look really well, you will realize that
our chairman is a Muslim. Similarly, the Director General of our campaign is a
Muslim. And again, I Namadina Namadina Sambo am a Muslim. Only our presidential
candidate is a Christian. But in APC, the chairman of their party is a
Christian. And again the Director General of their campaign is a Christian. And
again, their Vice Presidential candidate is a pastor. In light of this, which
party is more Muslim? PDP! PDP! PDP!” he said in Hausa.
This isn’t the first time the vice president has made
such patently divisive appeals to religion in public. At almost every campaign
stop in the Muslim north, he constructs Manichean binaries between “good”
Muslims, which the PDP supposedly represents but masks with a Christian figurehead
president, and “bad” Christians, which the APC supposedly embodies but cleverly conceals
with a token Muslim presidential candidate. In other words, contrary to the
narrative that PDP publicity secretary Olisa Metuh has popularized, PDP is the
real “Janjaweed party.”
This is really a new low even by the primitive
standards of Nigerian politics where vulgar appeal to base primordial emotions
is the norm in electioneering.
At no time in Nigeria’s history has the second most
important person in the country openly declared adherents of one religion as less
worthy than those of the religion he professes. This has got to be the most
vulgar and unvarnished display of unadulterated bigotry by a political leader
of Sambo’s stature.
This is curious, especially coming from a person who
couldn’t even properly recite Sūrat al-Fātiḥah, the first chapter
of the Qur’an, in another religiously tinged campaign stop in one of the far
northern states.
My six-year-old, all-American girl, Maryam, was able to spot
two errors in Sambo’s recitation. I was laughing hysterically after I listened
to the audio tape of Sambo’s bungled recitation when my daughter asked to know
what was going on. I told her one old man couldn’t recite Surat al- Fatihah.
She insisted I play it for her, and was able to isolate two errors in Sambo;s
recitation.
It’s none of my business, nor should it be anybody’s,
if Sambo can’t recite the first chapter of the Qur’an, which most Muslims learn
from the age of 3 or earlier, but a man who invokes Islam to legitimize his
quest for political power and to demonize his opponents should at least
demonstrate basic competence in the religion. Now several Muslims are calling
into question Sambo’s claims to being a Muslim. They say real Muslims recite the
Fatihah during prayers at least 17 times every single day, making it the most
recited chapter in the Qur’an. That’s why it’s second nature to most Muslims. A
Muslim who can’t properly recite it mustn’t be a real Muslim, they say. It’s
not my place to sit in judgment over Sambo’s religiosity.
It’s just that it so often happens that people who are
quick to rouse religious passions to achieve political goals are usually the
least religious people. We have seen that from the accounts of people who have escaped
from Boko Haram’s terror camps. They describe their Boko Haram tormentors as
drug-addicted homicidal maniacs who have no care for religious piety in their
personal lives. Just yesterday, I watched an interview that CNN’s Christiane
Amanpour had with former ISIS hostage Didier François, who revealed that his
ISIS captors weren’t even observant Muslims. He said he asked them for a copy
of the Qur’an and they couldn’t give him one in the nearly 11 months he was
held captive. Yet they did all the bestial murders of innocent souls in the
name of a religion they neither knew nor cared about.
I hope when President Jonathan said sometime ago that
he had Boko Haram members in his cabinet, he wasn’t referring to Vice President Namadi
Sambo. Sambo’s exaggerated appeals to his religious identity during political
campaigns even when he obviously knows next to nothing about his religion (as
evidenced from his inability to recite the most basic portion of his religion’s
holy book) fits the pattern of Boko Haram and ISIS terrorists.
This is probably an extreme extrapolation—and I
apologize if I am totally wrong—but Sambo’s unwarranted and invidious
invocation of religion at every campaign stop in the north demeans his office
and person and endangers the nation’s fragile peace. He needs to stop it now!
To be fair, even the APC plays the religious card,
too, sometimes subtly and at other times explicitly, but I have never heard
General Buhari or Professor Osinbajo play to the religious gallery on the
campaign trail. And the Vice President has more symbolic power than Buhari and
Osinbajo. That’s something to chew over.
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