While V.P Yemi Osinbajo has denied readying hiself to declare his 2023 presidential ambition after his party congress, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has not stopped heckling him.
MURIC is campaigning for a Muslim president from the southwest, saying the region has always produced Christian presidential candidates and presidents.
In a statement he signed, MURIC’s executive director Prof Ishaq Akintola noted that this factor has given Yoruba Christians both political and economic edges and subjected Yoruba Muslims to political marginalisation, social segregation and gross economic disadvantage leading to abject penury among Muslims in the sub-region.
“We will like the Vice President to know that it is not his turn yet. Neither is it the turn of any other Christian from the South West. This is because three Yoruba Christians (Obasanjo, Shonekan and Osinbajo himself) have occupied the presidency whereas no single Yoruba Muslim has been either military head of state, president or vice president of Nigeria,” he said.
According to him, Muslims in the South West will no longer remain onlookers in matters affecting our welfare and our collective destiny.
“Any Yoruba Christian or Muslim candidate seeking office will have to consult the Muslim community. Nobody will be allowed to take Muslims for a ride and get elected on a platter of gold,” he said, adding religion would not have been a factor for them.
“But the brazen effrontery and undisguised persecution of Yoruba Muslims coupled with the criminal silence from those that matter among Christian leaders, civil society and Yoruba socio-cultural groups have made our stand necessary.”
He accused Osinbajo of silence in the face of Christians persecuting Muslims in the southwest schools, government establishments, and others.
“Neither has he uttered a single word of condemnation or sympathy on the matter. What then will be the fate of Yoruba Muslims when Osinbajo becomes the president of Nigeria. Christians in the South West will garner more courage?”
Akinola, however, answered his own question.
“Perhaps his silence can be due to his position as a pastor of the Redeemed Church whose declared objective is to plant churches within a few meters of each other throughout Nigeria.”
Osinbajo has recently urged Nigerians to rejects candidates who make a point of the nation’s ethnic and religious diversity.