₦airaland Forum

Message to the moderators: There has been a habit of moderators on this website towing certain religious lines and setting a very dangerous precedent. This habit of trying to give voice to one group while denying the others their right to express themselves is worrisome and leaves many questioning if this platform is truly for all Nigerians or if it has been carefully curated to spread a certain narrative against the secular nation of Nigeria. [b]Kindly leave this post up or be reported as a website used to convey dangerous radical fanatical ideas and be taken down by the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) via the official UK reporting channel at https://www.gov.uk/report-terrorism and also to the terrorism threats FBI division at tips.fbi.gov.

Take this as your final notice, You know yourselves, You have been warned. Give EVERY NIGERIAN a voice or see this website seized for spreading radical ideas in Nigeria.


Now to the post below:

Sheikh Jingir’s Remarks and the Hard Reality of Political Representation in Nigeria.


Many Nigerians, particularly Christians, are furious at Islamic cleric Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir (also referred to as Yahya Jingir). In recent remarks supporting a continued Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket for 2027, he praised the arrangement pioneered under President Bola Tinubu, urged Muslims to secure their Permanent Voter Cards, and spoke of showing “the infidels their limit.” He questioned why advocating for Muslim political unity was wrong when other groups pursue their own interests, and he framed population and electoral strength as justification for the strategy. The language was blunt, dismissive of Christians, and widely condemned as provocative and divisive.

The anger is understandable. Calling fellow citizens “infidels” in a fragile multi-religious country is inflammatory. It feeds perceptions of exclusion and heightens tensions at a time when insecurity, kidnappings, and ethno-religious violence already strain national cohesion. Critics across Christian leadership, opposition figures, and even some Muslims have rightly pushed back against the rhetoric.

Yet the emotional reaction risks missing a colder, more practical point. Instead of pure outrage, Jingir’s words should serve as a wake-up call about political representation and the realities of power at the national level.

1. You are angry that they called you an infidel, yet you, A Christian, for whatever reasons went out and supported a Muslim-Muslim ticket, completely relinquishing YOUR OWN INTERESTS on the national political stage

2. You are angry that they called you an infidel, yet you failed to apply basic political sense: at the national level, representation matters. Even in the United States, tickets often reflect representation across the political divide, Trump from New York paired with Vance from Ohio is one recent illustration of geographic and demographic considerations.

3. You are angry that they called you an infidel, yet because of tribal or other narrow politics, many who identify as Christian still prepare to vote for another Muslim-Muslim arrangement.

4. You are angry that they called you an infidel, yet some console themselves that they are represented because “the president’s wife is a Christian.”

5. You are angry that they called you an infidel, yet many watch as extremists and armed groups linked to Islamist or Fulani militancy attack churches, kidnap worshippers, take Christian women and girls to the bush and do as they please with these women and girls often with very little or no consequence, in some cases they are even rewarded with paid ransom.

In that light, the label becomes less surprising to those who view political outcomes as the real measure of influence. Is it any surprise that the Sheikh would refer to the Nigerian Christians as such?

The proper response is not only condemnation of his language but serious reflection on HOW and WHY Christian political leverage has become weaker and weaker and threatens to become EVEN weaker in a secular country, that was once known for using political balance across ethnoreligious lines to maintain the nation's fragile volatile political landscape.

Nigeria’s political tradition long favored religious balancing in the highest offices precisely because the country is roughly evenly divided and deeply polarized along faith lines. Breaking that pattern has proven to have some very dire consequences. Relying on symbolic gestures, ethnic arithmetic within Christian communities, or the private faith of a spouse does not substitute for institutional power. Security failures that disproportionately affect Christian communities in the Middle Belt and parts of the North further underscore the gap between numerical presence and effective protection or influence.

This is a call for Christians to treat politics as the contest for power and representation that it is.

Representation comes from turnout, strategy, coalition-building, and refusing to outsource one’s interests to the goodwill of others.

Christians playing ethnic politics on a national stage while the other part of the nation plays religious politics is only going to end up with one result: Abject failure and this is why the Christians in the nation have continued and would continue to relinquish political power and relevance. Too much infighting, too much tribal lines drawn inside the Nigerian Christian faith.

Instead of outrage at being called “infidel”, we should be looking in the mirror : at voting patterns, internal divisions, and the failure to translate population into consistent national leverage is more useful.
How long have we had so called powerful men of God convince us from the pulpit to relinquish our representation and our own interests while these so called men of God go about loading their bank accounts with enormous amounts of money while they go about their mornings "drinking tea with God".

Jingir’s remarks are crude and dangerous. They also reveal a political reality that emotional responses alone will not change. The wiser reaction is to treat them as evidence that representation is never given; it is organized, defended, and exercised.

@nlfpmod frontpage please