It was the meanest of a cut from a desperate politician whose footprints bear the nature of his politics. After living in the cold for many years, the Plateau State-born politician has found an easy way to embrace the floodlight. The ex-minister of sports, Barr Solomon Dalung, once a strong ally of former President Muhammadu Buhari, has of late, according to a Nigerian parlance, refused to “let us drink water and keep the cup” since he defected to the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Posing As Opposition
No doubt, the SDP is depicting itself as the strongest opposition in the media and poised to challenge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s comeback bid in 2027. Like he did before, Dalung has found the media an oxygen to be at the forefront of advocacy targeted at denying the president a comeback bid. The former minister knows that denying Tinubu’s re-election amounts to allowing a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. If something must be done to create an easy passage for the anti-Tinubu propaganda to scale through, some conspiracy theories must be woven around opposition’s strategies to swing public opinion to make their target soft.
Politics is all about intrigues and defence of personal interests. Those who must win in politics must be prepared to outsmart their opponents, do and say things that must convince others to join the popular bandwagon. In certain instances, strange political bedfellows sometimes must discard their differences and bury the hatchet to unite for realising a mutual objectives. For the barrister whose soul had left the All Progressives Congress (APC) after he failed to return as minister in 2019, his recent defection to join forces with the SDP is reflective of what all adaptable politicians do to realise a comeback bid, especially among some politicians who are principally driven by the direction of “where belle face”.
Religion And 2027
Dalung was quoted in a media interview as saying that, “Tinubu’s wife is going around minorities, or the northern Christians, and misinforming them or luring them with this argument that the northern Muslims have rejected Tinubu, so they should come and own the President.”
The above quote by the former minister, reveals Dalung’s penchant to embark on destructive means to create schism inthe polity and enthrone politics of religious discrimination. The former minister kept a sealed lip throughout the second term of Tinubu’s predecessor. He was loudly silent when there was opposition against Tinubu over the Muslim-Muslim ticket, mainly by ethnic minorities of the North.
However, the Bishop of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Most Rev. Dr. Matthew Hassan Kukah, had stressed that the Muslim-Muslim ticket was basically a strategy put in place by a political party to win elections. Less than two years after the inauguration of the Muslim-Muslim presidency, those who promoted and were at the forefront of backing the Tinubu for the 2023 presidential poll have vowed to work against the re-election of the president in 2027.
Let’s assume that the First Lady, Senator Remi Tinubu, now accused by Dalung of engaging in secret visits to groups and Northern Christians to drum up support for her husband, ahead of 2027, what are the chances that Tinubu won’t fall apart with these groups as he did with those who supported him in 2022?
Tinubu has shown himself to be his own man. People like Dalung who once ate on behalf of ethnic minorities, particularly as a Christian, should be gravely worried why he did not support Tinubu for the 2023 polls who is now delivering the dividends of democracy to all, including Christian communities that were discriminated against under Buhari who watched thousands of Northern communities decimated, especially those of Christians in the North, by terror gangs. Dalung’s media interview is borne in the pursuit of personal interest and mischief.
The Needful
What should be of importance to all is to interrogate the Tinubu Presidency over its electoral promises. Taking into consideration the performance profile of Northern Christian politicians, who are known to whip up religious sentiments for personal interests, the former minister has become the portrait of a desperate politician attempting to foul the air in order to be in the good books of his sponsors. Now that the Muslim-Muslim presidency is delivering more dividends of democracy than what the Muslim-Pastor presidency under which he served, Dalung thinks he will be saved from eight years of political wandering in the wilderness.
Politicians, especially among the northern ethnic minorities, have always engaged in deploying religious sentiment, selling their own people for a plate of porridge. Religion, being a personal matter, it is high time that Dalung be categorically told that pandering to faith, as it is being used by politicians to access the corridor of power, is now no longer realisable. For now, the former minister should note that there is no signal that the president, who had refused to succumb to the wishes of his supporters in 2023, will be willing to allow some people to own him after the 2027 polls.
Dalung’s allegations that the Nigerian First Lady is going about telling Northern Christians to come and own the president is not only patently false, but a deliberate lie from the pit of hell aimed at whipping religious sentiments for political advantage. To allege that Muslim North is against Tinubu is a barefaced political fabrication. Out of the 19 ministers, and Abuja, only three or so are Christians. The Muslim North has not rejected Tinubu. The presence of political heavyweights from the area in the government attests to this. Dalung’s imagination that Tinubu’s wife is luring Northern Christians to support her husband and “own him” is ridiculously far-fetched.
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