The fellow called Nasir El-Rufai is in the eye of the storm. He is being harangued for poking fun at Christians in Nigeria who he said fell cheaply for a well-oiled Islamic supremacist scheme that subjugated them in the 2023 general election. He is being derided in Christian circles over an outburst they believe can inflame religious passions. But those who are up in arms against the former governor are being reductionist in their approach to an issue that requires a holistic dissection.
Anybody who has more than a passing interest in the issue at stake must understand the fact that El-Rufai is not alone. He is leading a clan of fundamentalists for whom religion can only be seen from one prism, the Islamic prism. For this breed, every other thing spells infidelity. As a loose cannon, El-Rufai has to lead the charge. As the quintessence of foolhardiness, he will not mind rushing in where angels will fear to tread. That is why he went loose with his private convictions. He simply stepped forward to tell an idiotic tale on behalf of the mindless clan. Indeed, El-Rufai was just playing the divisive messenger. He is the harbinger of acrimony and bad blood.
The issue at stake here is El-Rufai’s little-mindedness. He was recently seen in a viral video where he leaked the intent of the nefarious plot that led to the installation of Muslim-Muslim ticket both in his Kaduna State and in Nigeria as a whole. The former governor of Kaduna State was open enough. He made us to understand that what transpired in the last election was just a dress rehearsal. It was an experiment. Those who plotted it did not know it would work. But they are pleasantly surprised that it did. Consequently, they are gloating. They are fortifying their fortresses for a future onslaught. El-Rufai’s triumphal display was aimed at drawing blood. He wants to place a stamp of mockery on the assault on Christianity. That was why he waded in with a burst of spleen.
It should be recalled that El-Rufai betrayed this primitive tendency during the campaigns for the 2023 presidential election. The talking point at that time was the unexpected political ascendancy of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi. Obi simply dwarfed the other presidential candidates in a manner that left many Nigerians gaping. He was like a thunderbolt from outer space. This gave El-Rufai so much to worry about. For this reason, while many applauded Obi for being refreshingly different, El-Rufai was choked with hate and resentment. He was ill at ease with the Obi mania. And so he launched an unprovoked attack on the Labour Party candidate.
He dismissed Obi’s candidature as inconsequential. He said Obi was a Nollywood actor. He projected that Nigerians, from North to South, would reject the Labour Party candidate. He even dismissed the huge votes, which Obi was set to harvest in Lagos State, as non-existent and unrealizable. He said Obi’s votes in Lagos would be a mere drop of water in the ocean. He was just bent on reducing Obi in the eyes of Nigerians. That was petty El-Rufai in his elemental worst. The elections have since held. And I dare say that El-Rufai must have been stupefied by Obi’s superlative performance in that election.
Let us return to El-Rufai’s true confession about the state of religion in our national life. He has, with that boastful video, ignited the flame of same-faith ticket, which was inflicted on Christians in the 2023 presidential election.
It must be noted here that Nigerian Christians who are at the receiving end of that devious arrangement have, so far, treated it as if it does not matter. That is the reason behind El-Rufai’s braggadocio.
When he and other Islamic fundamentalists hatched the plot, they were merely testing the waters. But somehow their plot scaled through. With it, the seed of Islamic dominance in Nigeria has been sowed. That is what El-Rufai is saying. That is what he is celebrating. In doing so, he is reminding Christians of how complacent they are. Maybe Christians in Nigeria could retort by arguing that they never accepted the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress. They are likely to remind everyone that that poisonous ticket did not win the election. They may be right. But they must also accept that they are wrong to have accepted to live with that imposition following the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.
I am compelled to say here that the Nigerian Christian is the typical Nigerian of our time. The typical Nigerian is complacent. He combines ignoble ease and hard liberty in his approach to life. His response to bad situations is that of acquiescence. He succumbs to it and then begins to fashion out ways of surviving it. He does not reject or rise against oppressive situations. That is the Nigerian in the Nigerian Christian.
This contrasts sharply with the disposition of his Muslim counterpart. The Muslim in Nigeria guards his religion jealousy. He sees any threat to it as a threat to his own existence. Whenever and wherever such threat is spotted, he rises spontaneously against it. He does not accept or reconcile himself with bad situations. He fights it off instantaneously. In other words, if the Nigerian Muslim were to be in the shoes of the Nigerian Christian, he would not have accepted a same-faith ticket that was skewed against him. He would have resisted it. Therefore, when the El-Rufais of the Islamic community in Nigeria taunt the Christians, they are simply telling the Nigerian Christian that he is the architect of his own misfortune, that he failed to act when it mattered.
However, beyond religion, the Nigerian Muslim is as complacent as his Christian counterpart. In other words, the typical Nigerian is a sleepy fellow. Nothing matters to him. He shrugs off challenges with incredible indifference. This disposition of the typical Nigerian is at the root of his country’s underdevelopment. Where he is supposed to rise to the challenge, he looks on morosely as if he is an outsider. He treats situations as if they are bubbles that will dissipate into thin air in a matter of seconds.
This way of life is clearly stultifying. It promotes bad governance. When those who govern are not held to account, they treat the state as their personal estate knowing full well that nobody will raise an eyebrow. This disposition of the Nigerian must have been at the root of the study which submitted that Nigerians are the happiest people in the world. They may well be.