Abdullahi Sule, the governor of Nasarawa State, has spoken out about how his campaign for a second term nearly failed because to religion.
He explained to media executives yesterday in Abuja that Nasarawa’s sizable Christian population made the Muslim-Muslim ticket extremely difficult for the All Progressives Congress (APC) to win.
He said: “My perception is that I pray that we don’t derail into religious politics. That is my prayer because this last election, as far as we are concerned, most especially in our state, it is purely religious politics. It was only a few people who did not care, especially in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that came and told me that they will vote for me; and they did. It is not just the fault of the other side, it is also our own fault. Our prayer is that it should not happen again because if it continues like this, no nation survives a religious crisis. Azerbaijan did not survive it, Bosnia did not survive, and I pray Nigeria does not run into that. There is a lot of work that we will have to do…”
Along with religion, the governor claimed that internal disputes in the state nearly prevented him from winning the election.
“If you don’t understand the story of what happened in Nasarawa during the election, you will not understand what happened in our case. Our story started with some internal wrangling within the APC. Firstly, the Muslim-Muslim ticket was a huge challenge for us in Nasarawa. That is number one. Number two is that we had our internal fight…As a party, once a decision is made, you have to get up and just work hard towards that…This one is having a problem with this; therefore, you cannot be this. Some of those people wanted to keep them at arm’s length, but they are people who are sellable; people who are acceptable (to the people), they are people who can win elections. So, when a big man says they cannot be candidates, that is really a problem…So, those were the problems that we had and that was why I just summarised it to you.
“…SDP and APC were one and the same party in Nasarawa State, but, we had to split because of this. Luckily for me, most of the people who were kicked out did not see me as the person responsible for their being kicked out. I knew they were going to work for their election and win, but I also knew they were going to work for me. So, I didn’t panic…” the governor said.
