2023: MURIC mobilizes Yoruba Muslim voters against Osinbajo, Christian presidential candidates from southwest

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has reiterated its preference for a Muslim president from the southwest in 2023, and anything different means the Yoruba Muslim won’t vote for the candidate.

In the same breath, the group said its position is not that of a rejection of a Christian president, though.

“No political party should tell us that they cannot find competent Yoruba Muslims”, Professor Ishaq Akintola, MURIC directors, said on Monday.

The likely Christian contender from the west is V.P. Yemi Osinbajo

A statement by the director said no Yoruba Muslim ever occupied the State House either as president or vice president since 1960.

“It is our belief that Yoruba Muslims need federal might to eliminate or at least scale down the tornado of oppression and the Tsunami of anti-Muslim sentiment.

“Only a Yoruba Muslim president who knows what has been happening can do this effectively. Who feels it, knows it”, Akintola said.

Akintola condemned the “stigmatisation galore” for Yoruba Muslims in Nigeria since independence, claiming they are denied almost all civil liberties, including admission into schools.

According to him, many cannot get international passports, driving licences and voter registration cards because they are asked to remove their hijab for capturing.

He also cited the hijab crisis the group is fighting across the region, saying school authorities humiliate hijab-wearing female Muslim students while the courts in the South-West are littered with litigations “on this ignoble stereotyping”.