Pastor Sam Aiyedogbon, the senior Apostolic Leader of the Realm of Glory International Churches has disclosed that Nigeria would have been on fire if it were Christian-Christian ticket.
The cleric also revealed that Christians are mobilising to vote against the Muslim-Muslim ticket fielded by the All Progressives Congress for the 2023 presidential election.
These were made known on Tuesday by the cleric in an interview with Arise TV.
He condemned the decision of the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to pick Senator Kashim Shettima, a fellow Muslim as his running mate.
Aiyedogbon stated that he was traumatised, adding that he stands with Christian leaders against the ticket.
He said, “I’m a Christian and every Christian leader directly or indirectly belongs to the Christian Association of Nigeria. And if you are in the Pentecostal Faith, you belong to the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. So, where they stand is where I stand. Much more than that, we are first and foremost humans, and I think the fundamental principle that God put in place at creation is respect for the dignity of every human. I’m human before I belonged to any ethnic group and religion, and the fundamental principle for respect for every human, which demands equity, fairness and sensitivity, has been violated. As a human being, I feel traumatised by all that has been going on. It’s not just a matter of where I stand.”
Asked what the situation will be like if a ruling party fielded Christian-Christian presidential ticket, Aiyedogbon said, “I can tell you that many places will be burning by now; blood will be flowing because there are extremists on the other side of the divide of religion that are not tolerant at all. They have been impoverished, poverty has been weaponised and those people have been turned into weapons. So, they will just tell them, can you imagine, they are saying that both President and Vice President of the next election must be Christian. Before you know it, they will start burning and start killing. I lived in the North for almost 10 years and know what we suffered.”
On Tinubu’s running mate, he said, “Kashim Shettima has a lot of baggage. They can be denying now but there are leaked audio conversations he had with Amosun. It has been in circulation and I kept it since it was released. Go and listen to the things he said against the South-East, against the Christians; we know his antecedents even as governor of Borno. If any Christian leader suddenly begins to support Muslim-Muslim ticket, we’ll suspect that he has been bought. The reason they are treating us like this is because some of the Christian leaders that represented us have allowed greed to drive them; they have shown that they are cash and carry, they have a price.”
Asked if there’s a sizeable amount of Christians in the North to make their votes worthy of attention, Aiyedogbon stated that the idea that Christians are minority in the region is a fallacy.
He said, “There has been an assumption, which is an illusion and fallacy, that Christians are minority in the North. I started my mission work in Katsina, which is less than two hours from Daura, President Buhari’s hometown. I used to go to Dutsema where his advance motorcade was attacked. In all of those places, we did practical mission work. The first thing they have done to us is to make Southerners think that everybody in the North is Hausa. Now, they have started calling it Hausa/Fulani. There is nothing called Hausa/Fulani. There are people in the South that buy the lies that everybody in the North is a Muslim. You hear a name like Yakubu and you think it’s Islamic. There are people even bearing Islamic names but are not Muslims. So, the whole analysis is based on a false premise and there has always been inflation of figures. From pre-independence and post-independence, population has always been manipulated because of the culture that says you can’t enter a married man’s house in the North to count his wives and children. So, when people come to count during the census, somebody will just come out and say he has 12 wives and 75 children; you have no right to go and verify whatever list he gives. So, figures have always been manipulated and the whole idea is based on that false premise. If you really interrogate that and subject it to forensic analysis, things will fall apart.”
When asked if Christians will be told to vote against the APC, the clergyman stated that Christians are already mobilising to teach the APC a lesson not to trample on people who are tolerant.
He said, “It’s not whether CAN, PFN or we Christian leaders will mobilise our members to vote against the APC and this ticket, we are already doing it and we are going to do more.” He added, “Whether they win or lose, they will learn that you don’t trample on people because they are tolerant or because you have bought a few people that are compromised. We are going to teach them a lesson. We are telling Christians to keep praying, let’s cry to God that these people, instead of alleviating our pain and the blood that has been flowing, are exalting and brandishing themselves and gaslighting us. We will mobilise and do everything within our power. Even if we die in the process, it is worth it.”