By FAROOQ KPEROOGI

There is something profoundly unsettling about the selective elasticity of the Tinubu presidency’s capacity for outrage. Its vocal cords appear to be in fine fettle when Catholic clerics call attention to the misery that government policies have visited on Nigerians. Those same vocal cords mysteriously retreat into quiescence when a prominent Muslim cleric transforms the country into a theological battlefield and converts electoral politics into a sectarian headcount in ways that potentially benefit the president.

Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir, a leading Izala cleric, recently called for another Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket in 2027 and cast the 2023 election as a triumph of Muslims over Christians. At a Kano State Government mass wedding on August 8, he urged Muslims to repeat the Muslim-Muslim ticket so that they could prove to “unbelievers” who he said claim numerical superiority that Muslims are more numerous.

“When the votes were counted,” he said, “Allah helped us, and we defeated them.” He also declared, “My vote is for Islam,” and invited his audience to affirm that their votes should similarly go to Muslims. He said his advocacy would pain “unbelievers” and described himself as someone who “raises the flag of Islam”.

As a Muslim, I want to go on record that Jingir does not speak for me. My compatriots are not my enemies because of incidental differences in our religious faiths.

Elections are not a referendum on the numerical strength of religious membership. Elections are just elections, and their consequences are borne by everyone. Both Muslims and Christians are writhing in never-before-seen existential torment because of the Tinubu government’s soulless, spirit-crushing, boneheaded, wrongheaded, externally imposed economic policies.

After the predictable outrage that his remarks provoked, Jingir had an opportunity to retrieve himself from the condemnable cesspool of sectarian triumphalism into which he had gleefully descended, but he chose pigheaded defiance. In an interview with BBC Hausa, he said he had “absolutely no regrets”, would never apologise and would continue to advocate a Muslim-Muslim ticket.

His attempt at clarification both clarified everything and nothing. “I am not campaigning for Bola Tinubu,” he said. “I am campaigning for my religion.” And that is precisely the problem.

Nigeria is a delicately balanced multi-religious country where reckless clerical rhetoric can have consequences that extend far beyond the immediate thrill of applause from a religiously homogeneous audience. Northern Nigeria, in particular, is a religiously plural region with a long, complicated history of Muslim-Christian tensions, episodic violence and mutual suspicion.

Muslim clerical elites exercise enormous influence over public opinion in much of the Muslim North. Their pronouncements are invested with a moral authority that the words of politicians rarely command. A preacher who transforms elections into contests between Muslims and “unbelievers” therefore does more than share an eccentric private opinion. He sacralises political difference. He invests ordinary democratic choices with the emotionally combustible force of religious obligation. That is unacceptably dangerous.

Jingir’s defenders have strained to explain away the language of kafir, “infidel” and arne as innocent descriptive terms for people who profess a different faith. That defense is willfully obtuse. Words acquire meaning from history, context, tone and usage. Kafir, “infidel” and arse are fighting words in Nigerian inter-religious discourse. They carry connotations of contempt, alterity, exclusion and civilisational hierarchy. They summon an “us” that is pure, righteous and entitled against a “them” that is alien, suspect and lesser.

A country riven by religious differences cannot afford that language from influential clerics. Nigeria has shed too much blood at the intersection of religion, politics and manipulation for sensible people to treat such rhetoric as harmless clerical exuberance.

The federal government’s response, or more accurately the Presidency’s studied silence over Jingir’s reckless religious provocation, becomes especially instructive when placed beside its recent reaction to Catholic leaders.

On July 28, leaders of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria met President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa. They spoke about insecurity, poverty, economic hardship, education and the general distress that millions of Nigerians endure. Cardinal John Onaiyekan later said the bishops told the president that Nigeria was “bleeding” and that ordinary people were hurting.

The Presidency sprang into combat mode. Daniel Bwala, one of Tinubu’s media advisers, accused Onaiyekan of sounding “more political than spiritual”. He questioned whether the cardinal spoke for all Christians and gratuitously dragged Peter Obi into the matter. Now, I invite the reader to judge who between Jingir and Onaiyekan sounds “more political than spiritual”.

Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, issued a statement with the remarkable title “Cardinal Onaiyekan’s Abuse of Clerical Privilege” where he hurled a string of irreverent vituperations at one of Africa’s most respected Christian clerics.

The contrast is jarring. A Catholic cardinal whose clerical “offence” consisted in telling the president that Nigerians were suffering was accused of abusing clerical privilege. A Muslim cleric who turned the president’s Muslim-Muslim ticket into an instrument of religious supremacy and spoke of electoral victory over “unbelievers” has so far attracted no remotely comparable rebuke from the presidential megaphone.

The National Human Rights Commission has commendably called for Jingir’s arrest and prosecution over hate speech. Femi Fani-Kayode, a Tinubu ally, has excoriated him. Several Muslim and Christian voices have condemned his rhetoric. But the Presidency itself has maintained a remarkably eloquent silence.

Silence never has a single meaning. Tinubu’s silence cannot responsibly be presented as proof that he shares Jingir’s views. Yet presidential silence acquires political meaning when it occurs alongside furious presidential speech directed at people whose “offense” is infinitely more benign.

The Presidency demonstrated in the Onaiyekan episode that it knows how to respond to clerics. It knows how to issue statements. It knows how to deploy its spokespeople. It knows how to accuse religious leaders of political partisanship and clerical impropriety. That same machinery has developed an inexplicable infirmity in the face of Jingir’s sectarian jingoism.

For every northerner who professes or aspires to pan-northernism, this is the time to speak. Ahmadu Bello, the standard for northern inclusiveness, would condemn Jingir.

There is a poignant historical anecdote that illustrates how far we appear to have fallen from an older ideal of northern pluralism. A widely shared account says that in 1962, a young John Onaiyekan emerged the best secondary school student in the entire Northern Nigeria. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of the Northern Region, was so impressed that he personally visited the young Onaiyekan in his hometown and asked what he wanted to become.

Onaiyekan reportedly said he wanted to become a Catholic priest. The Sardauna, a descendant of Usman Dan Fodio and the most consequential Muslim political leader of his generation in Northern Nigeria, supported the young Christian’s aspiration.

The significance of the anecdote transcends its charming simplicity. Ahmadu Bello understood that the North could remain recognizably Muslim in large parts of its cultural geography while making space for Christians to flourish in their own faith. Religious difference did not have to become religious antagonism.

In several past columns, I have invoked Steve Goodier who captured this wisdom beautifully: “We don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note. Only notes that are different can harmonise. The same is true with people.”

Nigeria’s religious diversity is a fact that wise leaders manage, protect and celebrate. It is a reality that reckless leaders and clerics weaponise.

President Tinubu repeatedly presents himself as a protector of religious freedom and national unity. He now has an opportunity to give substance to those professions. He should distance himself clearly and unequivocally from Jingir’s jingoism. He should state that his choice of a Muslim running mate was never a vehicle for Muslim supremacy, a religious census or an invitation to humiliate Nigerian Christians.

In my May 30, 2026, column titled “The Shettima Danger for Tinubu,” I argued that the choice of Shettima as vice president reflects the singularities of the cultural sociology of Nigeria where ethnicity has more primacy in self- and group-identification than religion in the South and where religion is a more consequential agent of group identification and mobilization than ethnicity in the North. Tinubu is first a Yoruba man before he is a Muslim, but Shettima, in the context of national politics, is first a Muslim before he is Kanuri. This consideration led me to re-christen the ticket a “Yoruba-Muslim ticket.”

Finally, Tinubu’s spokespeople should also discover the same energetic vocabulary of indignation and vituperation they summoned against Catholic clerics who called attention to economic hardship and insecurity.

A government that berates a cardinal for saying Nigerians are hurting can surely find words for a cleric who divides Nigerians into Muslims and “unbelievers.” Nigeria’s peace requires that it does.

•Farooq Kperoogi is a US-based Nigerian journalist, scholar and syndicated columnist.

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