Adams Oshiomhole, a former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), criticised the party’s decision to run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the general elections of 2023 on Thursday.
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Nigeria’s problems, according to Oshiomhole, who spoke to journalists in Abuja, go beyond religion.
Instead of concentrating on religion, he urged Nigerians to talk about the plans each presidential contender has for the nation.
The Christian Association of Nigeria’s (CAN) criticism of the APC over the Muslim-Muslim ticket was also called extortion by the previous governor of Edo State.
Oshiomhole said: “Those who are speaking and leading the campaign in the APC family, if they were such believers in Christianity they had the opportunity to vote and canvass for votes for one of the Christian candidates and there were quite a few.
“But they were on record as having led the campaign on the side of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, knowing very well that he is a Muslim. I think the Nigerian challenges are beyond religion
“I think the issues before us which we have to spend time discussing is what will any of the presidential candidates do differently to expect a different outcome, not what will a Christian or Muslim do.”
He also faulted claims by some Christians that they were being persecuted, saying there was no evidence to support the claim.
He added: “I don’t think they bothered to show the evidence and yet we have not just a Christian Vice-President, we have a pastor, a senior advocate.
“So if religion is the issue, I guess Nigeria will be Eldorado.”
On the country`s security and economic challenges, the ex-governor insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari inherited a nearly collapsed economy while the 2015 general elections was postponed because of security challenges in parts of the country at the time.
“In looking at the security situation for example, we observed that the size of the Nigerian Army after the Civil War was about 250,000.
“Today, it’s about the same size, then the population of Nigeria was about 50 million, today we are about 200 million,’’ he concluded.
