12th
April, 2022
PRESS RELEASE:
OSINBAJO’S
DECLARATION IS RCCGISATION OF THE POLITY – MURIC
Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo,
joined the growing list of presidential aspirants yesterday, Monday, 11th
April, 2022. However, an Islamic human rights organisation, the Muslim Rights
Concern (MURIC) has described Osinbajo’s declaration as unethical and purely
evangelical.
MURIC made this assertion in a press statement
signed by its founder and director, Professor Ishaq Akintola on Tuesday, 12th
April, 2022.
The statement reads :
“The Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi
Osinbajo, yesterday declared his intention to run for the post of president in
the coming 2023 general elections. This
declaration, to our mind, will not pass any ethical screening. It is purely
evangelical.
“As a pastor of the Redeemed
Christian Church of God (RCCG), Osinbajo is simply carrying out his own part of
the RCCG instruction dished out a few weeks ago on the creation of a political
department in all parts of Nigeria. We see Osinbajo as the arrow head of the
RCCGisation of the Nigerian polity. His declaration must therefore be seen as a
demonstration of his own loyalty and obedience to the directive which came from
the RCCG headquarters.
“But MURIC cannot keep quiet after Osinbajo’s
declaration because it is not in consonance with our agenda for the South West.
We have never hidden this agenda from public view as it was made public as far
back as February 2021 when we declared our preference for a Yoruba Muslim
president.
“We anchored our cassus belli for this
preference on the persecution of Yoruba Muslims by their Christian neighbours
and we rationalised that we need a Yoruba Muslim as president of Nigeria in
order to liberate Yoruba Muslims from decades of marginalisation,
impoverishment, oppression, persecution, tyranny and injustice. This is a
struggle we cannot abandon at this crucial stage.
“Can Osinbajo tell us he is unaware of the
persecution of Muslims in the South West all these years? Was he not the
attorney general in Lagos State when Muslims in the state were forced to take
the hijab case to court? Was he not the attorney general in the state when the
lower court did its judicial somersault? Can he, in good conscience, wash his
hands off that case?
“Is Osinbajo also unaware
of several incidents of religious oppression against innocent Muslim students
in public schools spread all over Yorubaland since he became vice president? Has he ever commented on these cases? By the
way, what is the vice president’s view on the right of Muslim women and Muslim
female students to use hijab now that he wants to be president in a country
with a majority Muslim population? This is a special question for the vice
president. Nigerian Muslims want to know.
“If he has always pretended not to know about the
persecution and marginalisation of Muslims in Yorubaland, will his ascension to
the highest office in the land not worsen these incidents of humiliation and
intimidation of our mothers, our wives and our beloved daughters? Won’t our
traducers grow a thousand times in impunity and cruelty knowing fully well that
central power is in their hands now that a pastor is the president of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria?
“Osinbajo’s declaration presupposes that Yoruba
Christians are born to rule. It gives the provocative impression that Yoruba
Muslims are ‘children of slaves’ (a la Ishmael and Isaac storyline) who
should never taste power. As we have argued in earlier press statements, all
the four Yorubas who have been in Aso Rock were Christians: Olusegun Obasanjo,
Earnest Shonekan, Oladipo Diya and the incumbent vice president Yemi Osinbajo.
“If Osinbajo is basking in the born-to-rule
syndrome of the RCCG, he should remember that a Muslim, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed
Tinubu, brought him to limelight when he served under him as a commissioner in
his cabinet. No matter how much they try to rewrite history, nobody can wish
that fact away. The same Tinubu brought up your name ab initio in
connection with his current position in Aso Rock.
“If the above is true (and it is), the fact that
Tinubu declared on 22nd January, 2022 when he met President
Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock makes Osinbajo’s declaration look like a stab in
the back. The vice president cannot claim to be unaware of what even a three
months old baby knows already. Or is this how to repay goodness and mentorship?
There is something immoral about Osinbajo’s declarationIt stands in
contradistinction to a cardinal Yoruba concept, the ‘omoluabi’ concept. . It is
absolutely ‘unomoluabi’.
“Even the RCCG angle now becomes more interesting.
Osinbajo’s declaration comes across as pure evangelisation particularly in view
of the declaration of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) directing all
its parishes to open political offices in support of its members seeking
political posts. The proselytization of the presidency by no other person than
the vice president himself is an unprecedented and dangerous development. No
high level candidate in a general election has ever done it in this country.
Osinbajo’s
political party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) should watch it. Nobody
should underrate the perspicacity of Nigerian Muslims. We will reject any party
that promotes Redeemisation by forcing an RCCG pastor on Muslim electorates.
MURIC is not in alliance with any political party. It is already certain that
APC will lose the votes of Yoruba Muslims if it fields an RCCG pastor. We need
no rocket science to know that.
The Yoruba people
and the political parties should also consider another interesting angle in
this matter, namely, the preponderance of Ogun State indigenes among those
Yorubas who have been in Aso Rock. All four are from one state (Ogun State).
Three were from Abeokuta to be precise. Osinbajo is from Ikenne. Why must all
Yoruba rulers of Nigeria come from Ogun State alone? What happened to spread?
What happened to balancing? Where is inclusivity in the monopoly of leadership
by one state?
MURIC is not worried by this but we think Osinbajo
should mellow down and give someone from another state the chance to
rule. Asiwaju Tinubu is definitely not from Ogun State. By being vice president
for good eight years, Osinbajo has had a good taste of the pudding.
“We are resolved not to vote for the rallying point
of our oppressors. More importantly, Northern Muslims will not vote for the
candidate of the RCCG particularly after the RCCG made so much noise about
creating a political department a few weeks ago. It was an audacious,
contemptuous and repugnant confrontation. Osinbajo’s declaration is not only a
concretisation of RCCG’s temerity, it is a ludicrous attempt to ‘RCCGise’ or
‘Redeemise’ the polity. We advise Osinbajo to ‘undeclare’
Professor Ishaq Akintola,
Director,
Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC)
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