Muslim-Muslim ticket will fail – Dogara

A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, on Tuesday said the adoption of a Muslim-Muslim ticket by the All Progressives Congress for the 2023 presidential election is a fruitless political effort that has been doomed to end in spectacular failure.

According to The Punch, Dogara expressed his views in Abuja while delivering his keynote address at a summit tagged, ‘Meet The Church,’ organised by the Nigeria National Christian Coalition with the theme, ‘The role of the church in nation-building’.

He said, “In their convoluted posturing, they have placed state-building ahead of nation-building; a task never before achieved in history and we need no seer to tell us that such endeavour is guaranteed to end in spectacular failure. No divided people have ever built any civilization.

“I am so elated that today’s church in Nigeria has shaken off the beast of the complacency of the past into fire by speaking up and resisting measures adopted by some political platforms that will hamper nation building.

“In a manner that negated the fundamentals of nation building, such as shared identity, values and visions, the APC adopted the same faith ticket in a country that has never attained nationhood.”

According to him, long before the adoption of the same faith ticket, the church had warned against it through the Christian Association of Nigeria, Catholic Secretariat, ECWA and so many other Christian organisations.

Dogara said, “These warnings were not only ignored but dismissed in one fell swoop by the APC presidential candidate who strangely believes that he can build a strong, secure and viable nation-state without first forging a shared identity, vision and values for our people thereby enabling us transit from citizens of a country into a nation of people with strong shared identity and values.

“To demonstrate that the church is right, it is not alone in condemning the same faith ticket. Other prominent Islamic clerics and Muslim leaders have also spoken in the same light.

“It is a good omen that both Christian and Muslim elites are not complacent over this matter. To this end, it will be easy to generate the needed elite consensus that is key to nation-building.

All nations are built by elite consensus while all countries that failed in nation-building were destroyed by elite complacency.”