The Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN) on Tuesday provoked a fresh controversy on the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 election, which, it said, has fallen short of expectations.
According to the organization, the same faith ticket adopted by President Bola Tinubu to emerge victorious in the last general election has not brought any positive changes to the lives of Nigerians.
The President of SCSN, Sheikh AbdurRasheed Hadiyyatullah, gave the verdict in an interview with journalists during a National Conference which held Abuja with the theme, “Matters Arising From 2023 Election and Associated Socio-Economic Challenges.”
He said despite the enormous support received by the President during the election, Nigerians have not enjoyed dividends of democracy since he came to power.
Arise News reports that Tinubu, who was the presidential candidate of the ruling APC, adopted the Muslim-Muslim ticket when he picked Kashim Shettima as his running mate, despite national outcry, especially from Christian faithful.
He defeated his closest rivals, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP).
Hadiyyatullah said the reason many Nigerians supported the same faith ticket was to see how it could engender development to the country, adding however that nothing has been achieved for the past seven months.
He said, “The Nigeria of today is too bad. What we are buying at N200 before is N2000 now. We have scarcity of Naira and unemployment is escalating. Nigerians are not enjoying the new government at all. I don’t want to go personal but the Sharia Council helped the Muslim-Muslim ticket to be successful. We campaigned and supported this government until it came to power, but we are suffering.
“Some of the Ministers are siphoning and looting the treasury. I don’t want to mention any name but we have all seen and read it. Nigerians have been suffering since the last seven months when this government came to power.
“We are not making any progress. The reason for the Muslim-Muslim ticket was to progress, triumph, succeed and to have a good government but we didn’t have anything.”
The cleric advised Ministers who are not ready to work for the good of the nation to resign and allow honest Nigerians take their place.
Hadiyyatullah said, “See how Nigerians are suffering. No money. No progress. We have not enjoyed anything since seven months of this government. We are sympathetic with this government but the way forward is for some of these Ministers to go home and rest and we will find other people who will be honest with themselves and the country, those who are there to work not to loot the country.”
A former governor of Zamfara State, Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima, called on Nigerians to support the present administration, saying last week’s judgment by the Supreme Court is a testament of the character of the President who refused to interfere in the judgment because he is democrat.
Yerima said, “Mr. President has said that he is going to undertake a reform of the electoral system. He is going to present a Bill on that to the National Assembly because it is work of the National Assembly to review the happenings in elections from time to time. They are from various constituencies and they know what has transpired.
“So they are going to look at the Electoral Act from time to time, and most likely even the review of Nigerian constitution because a lot of people are talking or requesting for the review of the constitution to conform with the current realities of changing our society.
“The recent Supreme Court judgment on governors of Kano, Zamfara and others is a testament that the government did not interfere because if the President had wanted, he would have used all the peripheral of power to ensure that his party overrides whatever aspiration other people have.
“But he kept himself to the ethics of politics, the ethics of the religion and never interfered and this has been said by the governors who won and the governors who lost. so I think if we can have a leadership like this, that is people who will allow judiciary to perform its basic constitutional duty, things will be better for Nigeria.”
The Governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, represented by the Commissioner for Education, Prof. Muhammad Sani Bello, said the person who puts himself under reckoning in this world is the one who will have a very easy reckoning on the day of judgment.
Friday Olokor, Abuja
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