Praying for Peaceful Polls

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, Godfathers: An Introduction. Buy the issue here.

Nigeria is a deeply divided society. The country bifurcates along ethnic, regional/geopolitical, and religious lines. Riding on these cleavages to political power, therefore, is sectarian with grave implications on the legitimacy of the candidate that emerges. It also sets a precedence that, in the long run, could redefine elections as a political process to sectarian and primordial gyrations. But does religion matter in Nigerian politics? Will it play a significant role in the 2023 presidential elections? What does existing data tell us about the myth of a ‘monolith north’ and the religiously bi-polar southwest? What implications will these developments have on post-election Nigeria’s stability?

By prohibiting the adoption of any religion as a state religion, Nigeria is often profiled as a secular state—secularism, here, suggesting that religion is a private affair and has no leanings on public life. However, describing Nigeria as a secular state is simplistic, as religion conspicuously influences politics in Nigeria. Hence, diverse positions exist that characterize the country as either ‘partially secular’, ‘non-secular’, or ‘multi-religious.’ In a 2020 study, I attempted to demonstrate the connections between religion and politics in Nigeria. I traced this relationship to colonial policies which recognized Islam as a civilization. Islam was mainstreamed into the colonial administrative politics of the Northern Nigerian Protectorate (and later northern region) by preserving the shari’a jurisprudence while concomitantly westernizing southern Nigeria.

In 1960, shari’a was relaxed as part of the concessions for independence. However, a fault line had emerged between the Christian-dominated South and Muslim-majority North. The Islamic revivalism agenda, championed by Ahmadu Bello, the grandson of Usman dan Fodio and the leader of the ruling Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC), and the rhetoric of Islamic conquest of southern Nigeria birthed tensions, suspicions and trepidations and further sharpened the religious fault-lines. Nevertheless, Muslims, through umbrellas such as Jama’atu Nasril Islam (Society for the Victory of Islam), still pushed for the visibility of Islam in Nigeria’s politics as they argued that Nigeria’s supposed secularism is premised on Western civilization that is a product of Christian tradition.

The debate for the inclusion of shari’a law in the 1979 Constitution, Nigeria’s membership in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1986, the declaration of shari’a states in northern Nigeria in 1999, the Boko Haram insurgency, and recently, herders’ southwards violent escapades, are conceived by some, such as Governor Samuel Ortom, Professor Wole Soyinka, Christian Association of Nigeria, among others, as attempts by Muslims to mainstream political Islamism. Such ‘threat’ heralded Christians’ responses documented by Ebenezer Obadare and Ruth Marshall and the gradual ‘religionization’ of Nigeria’s secularism. With religion influencing state laws and permeating institutions, it became imperative to strike a religious balance in employment, appointments, admission, pilgrim boards, public prayers, and candidates in elections, among others. The competing influence of Islam and Christianity on the polity, I have previously argue d, implies that Nigeria is not a secular state but a theocratic diarchy—a polity equally and significantly influenced by two religions. Hence, religious sensitivity is high. And this makes religion a crucial element in understanding and contextualizing certain political behaviours.

It is important to emphasize that religious tolerance has worsened over the years due to the politicization of religion and the religionization of politics. Beyond the declaration of some states in northern Nigeria as being shari’a states, a move that Katrin Gänsler has referred to as ‘a political drawcard’, religious intolerance has manifested in several ways including the escalation of violent religious conflicts, the emergence of fundamentalist groups, the proliferation of Hijab activism by Muslim students in southwest Nigeria, and the obstruction of age-long religious balancing in political posts within religiously bipolar states.

Religious lobby groups are increasingly involved in politics and are trading their votes for favourable post-election policies. For instance, in 2015, the Joint Muslim Forum opted to support ‘any Lagos governorship candidate that supports the use of hijab in public schools.’ Similarly, during the tenure of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, religious groups such as the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) overtly supported President Goodluck Jonathan, a move that offered the former unfettered access to the presidency. Presently, it has become a ‘normal’ for Muslim and Christian religious leaders to adopt and openly or surreptitiously canvass for their preferred candidate which, often time, are people of their faith...