Dogara and Babachir drag unsuspecting Christians into personal feuds

Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, signaled the direction of political events with his unprovoked defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) on July 4, 2020. As the astute politician that he is, he predicted that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose presidential ambitions were widely publicized, would need a prominent northern Christian as his running mate once he chose the ruling party’s presidential ticket for the 2023 elections.

As a northern Christian and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, he reasoned that if Tinubu chose the presidential ticket, he would almost certainly be Tinubu’s running mate. His dismay knew no bounds when Tinubu chose former Borno State governor Kashim Shettima as his running mate after careful consideration. His reaction has been to use religious feelings as a form of resistance. As a result, he has taken it upon himself to mobilize Christians, particularly those in the North, against the Muslim/Muslim ticket, as he and other disgruntled party members refer to it.

Dogara found an ally in a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, who, like the former speaker, saw the VP ticket as an opportunity to re-enter the political fray after being booted out of office by the Buhari administration on allegations of inflated contracts and other forms of corruption. He, like Dogara, believed that his status as a former SGF qualified him to be Tinubu’s running mate. That, however, was not to be. Rather than accept his fate, the former SGF has teamed up with Dogara to discredit their party and presidential candidate ahead of the 2023 elections.

Many were unaware of the grudge Lawal held against Tinubu even before the issue of running mate arose, as the latter was said to have supported the APC candidate preferred by First Lady Aisha Buhari over the one supported by Lawal for the 2023 senatorial election in one of Adamawa State’s constituencies. That, according to the source, was the reason for the former SGF’s hastily issued press statement following Tinubu’s famous speech in Abeokuta to incite President Buhari and the North against Tinubu’s aspiration.

“I first read it this morning on an Adamawa group platform and the anger is palpable and all around,” Lawal said of the speech, which he described as an attack on Buhari and the North. Will Tinubu win the primaries on Monday without Northern support? Yorubas should resist the temptation to join in the northerner-bashing game at this critical juncture—the primary election is only three days away.

“It is unfortunate that Bola himself chose to participate in this bashing game, speaking in Yoruba and in Yoruba land in a way that appears to denigrate Buhari.” I could almost feel the discomfort of all the northerners sitting next to him on that podium… When Yorubas vilify the North in this way, our sense of fear and insecurity under a Yoruba presidency is heightened, prompting us to reconsider our support for not only Bola, but any Yoruba as president.”

Elisha Abbo, the third member of the triumvirate in the calumny campaign against the Tinubu/Shettima ticket, has entered into a marriage of convenience with the duo of Dogara and Lawal in his desperate bid to worm his way back into the minds of his predominantly Christian constituents in Adamawa North following his disgraceful physical attack on a female attendant and nursing mother at a sex toy shop he visited in Abuja with a police order The incident was said to have so irritated his constituents that many of them vowed never to do business with him again.

Fortunately, the trio has found willing allies in some church leaders who are either unaware of the trio’s mission or are too politically inclined to see through their selfish agenda. They are not asking why, despite the popular saying that charity begins at home, Dogara is fighting against a Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket while never seeing the need to speak out against a similar arrangement in his state, where Senator Baba Tela, a Muslim, is deputy to Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed, another Muslim. The country is in desperate need of prayers, but the church leaders who should be leading the sessions are too preoccupied with politics.

I have lost faith in the ability of our church leaders to remain neutral in matters bordering on party politics since Bishop David Oyedepo, the founder of the Living Faith Church Worldwide and presiding bishop of Faith Tabernacle in Ota, Ogun State, yielded his pulpit to former President Goodluck Jonathan for campaign as the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his bid for reelection in 2015. Unfortunately, nothing has happened in their camp since then to cause me to reconsider. In fact, their conduct and demeanor in political matters have only added credence to the now widely held belief that they are manifestly and irreversibly partisan.

In 2019, Oyedepo co-opted some church leaders into the onerous task of persuading former President Olusegun Obasanjo to forgive his former deputy and PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and support his (Atiku’s) bid not only to stop President Muhammadu Buhari’s reelection but also to take over his seat.