Nigeria, which is by far Africa’s most populous country goes to the polls in a general election on Saturday. There have been warnings since at least 2015 that Nigeria is on the brink of genocide with repeated  jihadist attacks on Christians now not just confined to the Muslim majority North, but also happening in the Middle belt and last summer spreading to the Christian majority South West.

In that context, and in a country where, whilst actual population figures are disputed, Christian and Muslim populations are roughly comparable, it is incumbent on political leaders and political parties to foster peaceful co-existence and freedom. In the past, one way that has been done has been by the custom of parties picking both a Muslim and a Christian as their candidates for president and vice president. The current president Muhammadu Buhari is a Muslim from the North, while his vice-president Oluyemi Osinabajo is a Christian from the south.

However, in this election not only have both of the two main political parties picked a Muslim as their candidate for president, but the current governing party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) Party of President Buhari have opted to have Muslim candidates for both President and Vice-President. The APC will doubtless argue that their choice of Bola Ahmed Tinubu from Nigeria’s south west necessitated having a vice president from the north, which is predominantly Muslim.

However, there is another factor in the mix which has left many Nigerian Christians deeply concerned for the future of democracy in Nigeria and for the future of the country itself. This is that in January a conference to which the leaders of 75 Nigerian Islamic organisations were invited, not only openly backed the APC candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but claimed that he had promoted the idea of a dual Muslim ticket for many years. They also referred to the election as a “jihad” with one cleric reported in the Nigerian press as stating:

“remember that a Muslim is always better than an infidel. What more of two Muslims combined? This informed why we undertook to create this awareness and to let all of us know that this Muslim/Muslim ticket is a jihad call to all Muslims,"

The implications of this have not been lost on Nigerian Christian leaders, who see such claims as indicating an intention to create an Islamisation process across the whole of Nigeria if the APC win the election. This is something the Christian Association of Nigeria have repeatedly warned against. However, as both main political parties have selected Muslims as their presidential candidates, Christians in Nigeria are feeling both fearful and disenfranchised. Christians in the north have been left feeling particularly fearful.

When the APC announced its two Muslim candidates one bishop in the North described the choice as “totally reprehensible”. While the leader of a protest by Christians in the central state of Abuja stated that the basis of Nigeria as a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state of both Muslims and Christians which have “defined our way of life since the country attained independence in 1960” was now at risk, adding that Christians were:

“alarmed with the decision of the All Progressive Congress Party (APC) to disregard the Christian community in the choice of its vice presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential elections. Without mincing words, this is unacceptable and a recipe for creating sharp divides between the Muslims and the Christians in the country.”

In a country where there have long been warnings that Christians are facing potential genocide – this does not bode well for the future of Christians in Nigeria.

Read the Lindisfarne country profile on Nigeria HERE