With return of the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, from his one-month “rest” abroad, the All Progressives Congress, APC, leadership is meeting to agree on how to share top positions in the upcoming 10th National Assembly. That is to be expected.

Obviously, the party is learning from its past “mistake” of letting members-elect of the Senate and House of Representatives choose their leadership. This created a loophole for “rebels” within its ranks to ally with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to produce Dr. Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Hon. Yakubu Dogara as the Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2015.

Though the decision of the party to take direct charge of apportioning the posts might abridgethe rights of members to elect their leadership, it will, however, afford the APC the opportunity to properly configure the political offices of the incoming Federal Government in the larger interest of the country.

It is an opportunity to reassure Nigerians that its Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket was not an affront on the adherents of the other faiths but a convenient political strategy to win the elections. Now that the elections are over (pending the verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, PEPT), we urge Tinubu to rally his party to balance the leadership equation.

It is normal for politicians to respond to the impulse of political expediency and reserve top positions and “juicy” posts only for the parts of the country where they got the majority of their votes. If this is allowed, it will be a repeat of the departing President Muhammadu Buhari’s strategic blunder whereby he stubbornly implemented his “97 per cent/five per cent” formula of extreme nepotism. This helped render his regime most insecure and unstable and governed by an atmosphere of ethnoreligious antagonism.

Tinubu’s primary objective should be to restore the faith of Nigerians in the country, its institutions and laws which were largely lost in the past eight years, particularly after the 2023 general elections. He must give a fresh impetus to Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution on Federal Character. It provides thus:

“The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies”.

To this end, we urge the party to properly reflect on our religious diversity and give vent to considerations that will mollify aggrieved feelings of those opposed to the Muslim-Muslim ticket. Balance and fairness are important.