The Choice of a Nation: Religious Majoritarianism or Peaceful Coexistence?
The greatest need of Plateau State, and by extension Nigeria, is peace.
Not political peace manufactured for election seasons. Not the silence that follows exhaustion after years of bloodshed. Not the peace of the graveyard.
We need the kind of peace that allows a Christian to worship without fear, a Muslim to worship without suspicion, a farmer to return to his farm, a child to go to school, and every citizen to wake up each morning knowing that Nigeria belongs to him or her equally.
That peace can only become sustainable when insecurity *is not deployed as a decoy to advance ideological warfare but such warfare* is conquered and when those who wield influence over the hearts and minds of Nigerians understand that their words can either build bridges or set the nation on fire.
It is against this background that I invite President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the leadership of the All Progressives Congress to consider the growing controversy surrounding *the grotesque utterances attributed to* Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir.
This is not an attack on Islam.
It is not an argument against Muslim citizens participating fully in Nigerian politics.
It is not even an argument that a Muslim-Muslim ticket is, by itself, unconstitutional.
It is an appeal for Nigerians to interrogate the consequences of religious majoritarianism in a country as Nigeria.
And Plateau State is perhaps the most appropriate place from which to begin that conversation.
Jingir: From Religious Influence to Political Choice
Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir is a Nigerian Islamic scholar.
As a leading figure within Jama’atu Izalatil Bid’ah Wa’ikamatis Sunnah (JIBWIS), his words carry considerable influence among JIBWIS members. His public statements have extended beyond theology into politics, public policy and national affairs. Such public speakings are not new.
In 2020, during the EndSARS protests, Jingir described the protest as a plan to destabilise the government of President Muhammadu Buhari and destroy the North. He urged people not to support the protest and called for prayer instead.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he publicly described coronavirus as a Western conspiracy and deceit intended to prevent Muslims from observing their religious rites, despite government restrictions on mass gatherings.
The cited speaking episodes are important not because they settle the question of whether Jingir is a good or bad man. They establish something else: Jingir has historically been willing to use his religious authority to make strong political and public-policy comments.
That makes his latest public statement impossible to dismiss as a private conversation.
The Muslim-Muslim Ticket
Ahead of the 2023 elections, Jingir became one of the prominent religious voices advocating the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket.
A scholarly account of the controversy documented his appeal to another Muslim cleric, Sheikh Yusuf Sambo Rigacikun, to support the Muslim-Muslim arrangement, framing the choice in explicitly religious terms.
Now, as Nigeria approaches another election in 2027, Jingir has returned to the subject.
The controversy intensified after a video circulated in which he reportedly urged Muslims to sustain support for a Muslim-Muslim ticket and used the term “infidels” in referring to Christians while speaking about demonstrating Muslim numerical strength. Radio Nigeria reported the public statement and the reactions it generated.
More recently, Jingir has stepped up his public statements.
He has reportedly said that he has no regrets about supporting the Muslim-Muslim ticket and will continue to encourage Muslims to support it. He has also argued that his position is based on his religious convictions rather than a political campaign for President Tinubu.
That is his constitutional right.
But rights have boundaries and also come with consequences.
And Nigeria has a right to ask what those consequences will be.
The Quit Notice: Who Owns Nigeria?
Among the most disturbing claims now circulating from Jingir’s recent statement is the reported suggestion that Christians who reject the Muslim-Muslim ticket should leave Nigeria.
The precise wording and context of the viral video deserve independent examination before anyone treats every circulating transcript as authoritative. But the allegation is serious enough that it cannot simply be ignored.
Indeed, former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode has publicly called on President Tinubu and the Sultan of Sokoto to caution Jingir over remarks attributed to him, specifically rejecting any suggestion that Christians should leave Nigeria because they are uncomfortable with a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
My question is simple:
Leave Nigeria and go where?
Nigeria; who’s Nigeria?
The Nigeria of our Constitution?
The Nigeria for which Christians, Muslims and adherents of other faiths have shed blood?
The Nigeria where millions of Christians have voted for Muslim candidates and millions of Muslims have voted for Christian candidates?
The Nigeria in which the national flag belongs equally to the Muslim, the Christian and the traditionalist?
If a Christian is told to leave Nigeria because he does not accept a particular religious configuration of political leadership, then we have moved beyond an argument about a presidential ticket.
We have entered the dangerous territory of asking who has the right to belong.
And that is a question Nigeria cannot afford to answer wrongly nor is such statement a Language of Peace!
This brings me to Plateau State.
Only recently, Jingir himself told Vice President Kashim Shettima that peace had come to stay in Plateau State and that Muslims, Christians and people of other faiths had collectively resolved to embrace peaceful coexistence.
That is a beautiful declaration.
I welcome it.
But peace is not merely what we declare after the violence.
Peace is also what we say before the violence.
It is not enough to say that Christians and Muslims should live together in Plateau while simultaneously permitting rhetoric that could make one community feel that its citizenship is conditional upon accepting the political supremacy of another faith.
Therefore, I ask Sheikh Jingir respectfully:
Can a man be an ambassador of peace while telling citizens of another faith, explicitly or by implication, that they should leave the country if they reject a religiously defined political arrangement?
Can religious majoritarianism produce the peace Plateau desperately needs?
Can the language of “us” and “infidels” produce the trust necessary to heal communities that have suffered years of bloodshed?
Can numerical superiority in religion become a legitimate basis for determining who should control the political destiny of a plural nation?
And if Muslims constitute a majority, as Jingir appears to claim, does majority status confer ownership?
Democracy says no.
Nigeria’s Constitution says no.
The moral conscience of a nation siege of an ideological warfare should say no.
A Case Study for President Tinubu and the APC
This is where President Tinubu and the APC must make a choice.
Not necessarily about the Muslim-Muslim ticket.
That political decision has already been made and placed in the public arena for interrogations.
The choice before them is whether they will allow the defence of that ticket to become a defence of religious majoritarianism.
There is a profound difference.
President Tinubu has repeatedly presented himself as a president for all Nigerians. In Plateau in 2025, the Presidency emphasised his commitment to fairness, tolerance and inclusivity among religious communities.
That commitment must now be tested.
The President should not be expected to control every statement made by every religious leader who supports him.
But when any religious figure openly identifies his support for the President and Vice President with a religious agenda, the President cannot afford the luxury of silence.
Jingir has himself clarified that his call for Nigerians to support Tinubu and Shettima is his personal opinion and not the position of JIBWIS.
That clarification is helpful.
It also makes the next step very simple.
The President and APC should similarly make their own position unmistakably clear.
They should say:
Nigeria belongs equally to Christians and Muslims including those of other faiths.
No Nigerian should be asked to leave the country because of his or her faith.
No religious group owns Nigeria.
No citizen is an infidel in relation to his or her choice of faith that’s constitutionally guaranteed to citizens.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket is a political arrangement, not a declaration of religious supremacy.
And anyone supporting the President does so as a Nigerian citizen, not as an owner of Nigeria on behalf of a particular faith.
That would strengthen the President.
It would not weaken him.
Silence Creates Suspicion
If the President refuses to dissociate himself from inflammatory religious rhetoric, Nigerians will inevitably begin to ask whether there is a relationship between the rhetoric and the political project.
That is not a conspiracy theory.
It is a question of political communication.
When a powerful religious voice says, in effect, support the Muslim-Muslim ticket because of our religious identity, and simultaneously expresses support for Tinubu and Shettima, the public has a legitimate right to know whether the President agrees with the religious framing of his candidacy.
The worst thing President Tinubu can do is allow Nigerians to fill that silence with their own conclusions.
The same applies to the APC.
If Jingir’s advocacy is merely Jingir’s personal religious and political opinion, let the APC say so.
If it represents the APC’s thinking, let Nigerians know.
If it does not, then the party should have the courage to dissociate itself from such a language that threatens national cohesion.
And What of Plateau?
Plateau cannot afford another season of religious suspicion.
Human Rights Watch’s documentation of the state’s earlier violence recorded how Christian and Muslim leaders eventually recognised that religion had been exploited for political and other interests and called for mutual respect and tolerance.
That lesson must not be forgotten.
The people of Plateau have paid too high a price for political and religious manipulation.
The real victory for Plateau is not that Christians defeat Muslims.
It is not that Muslims defeat Christians.
The victory is when Plateau defeats violence.
When a Christian farmer can cultivate his farm without fear.
When a Muslim trader can conduct his business without suspicion.
When a child can attend school without inheriting the hatred of his parents.
When a community can bury its dead without preparing for retaliation.
When politics becomes about roads, schools, hospitals, jobs, security, welfare and human dignity rather than which religion has captured the presidency.
That is the Plateau we should be building.
My Personal Question as a Christian
I write this not merely as a citizen but as a Christian leader.
And I must ask a question that may sound rhetorical today but could likely become painfully real tomorrow:
If the conspiracy of a permanent Muslim-Muslim political arrangement succeeds, and the language accompanying it becomes the language of religious ownership of Nigeria, where exactly do you expect Nigerian Christians to relocate to?
I ask this not because I intend to leave Nigeria nor wish Christians to do so.
I have nowhere else to go, and so do Christians.
Nigeria is our country.
It is our inheritance.
It is the country of our children, grandchildren and descendants.
It is the country for which generations of Nigerians—Christians and Muslims alike—have offered their selfless labours to nurture.
Nobody gave Nigeria to Muslims.
Nobody gave Nigeria to Christians.
God gave us Nigeria, and our Constitution makes us equal citizens of it.
Therefore, no religious leader, no political party and no President has the moral authority to convert Nigeria into the exclusive possession of one faith.
The Real Test of Tinubu’s Leadership
President Tinubu has an opportunity here.
He can demonstrate that supporting a Muslim-Muslim ticket does not mean supporting Muslim supremacy.
He can demonstrate that a Muslim President can be a constitutional President for Christians, Muslims and every other faith persons in the Nigerian project.
He can demonstrate that his administration’s commitment to peace in Plateau is not merely a government slogan.
He can demonstrate that political loyalty does not require religious submission.
And he can do something simple:
Speak.
Not against Islam.
Not against Jingir as a person.
But against any language that makes any Nigerian feel like a stranger in his own country.
The APC should do the same.
Because the question before Nigeria is no longer merely:
Muslim-Muslim or Muslim-Christian?
The deeper question is:
What kind of Nigeria will emerge from our politics—one in which faith determines belonging, or one in which citizenship determines belonging?
That is the choice before President Tinubu.
That is the choice before the APC.
That is the choice before Sheikh Jingir.
And ultimately, that is the choice before all Nigerians.
I choose a Nigeria where the Muslim can remain Muslim, the Christian can remain Christian, and both can remain fully Nigerian.
That is the Nigeria worth fighting for.
That is the Nigeria worth making peace for.
And that is the Nigeria Plateau State deserves.
