#OsinbajoDeclares: MURIC accuses Osinbajo of stabbing Tinubu in the back, playing RCCG’s card

An Islamic advocacy group, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has accused Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of stabbing former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the back and playing out a script by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).

In a statement on Tuesday issued by MURIC’s Director-General, Professor Ishaq Akintola, the group said Osinbajo’s presidential declaration on Monday was a clear case of the VP back-stabbing “Tinubu who has been his benefactor and made him who he is today.”

Akintola further accused Osinbajo of playing a script written by the “Redeemed Christian Church of God following the creation of a political department” by the church, a situation the Islamic organization said was against the agenda of the South-West.

The MURIC statement reads in part:

“The Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday declared his intention to run for the post of president in the coming 2023 general elections. This declaration, to our mind, will not pass any ethical screening. It is purely evangelical.

“As a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Osinbajo is simply carrying out his own part of the RCCG instruction dished out a few weeks ago on the creation of a political department in all parts of Nigeria.

“We see Osinbajo as the arrow head of the RCCGisation of the Nigerian polity. His declaration must therefore be seen as a demonstration of his own loyalty and obedience to the directive which came from the RCCG headquarters.

“But MURIC cannot keep quiet after Osinbajo’s declaration because it is not in consonance with our agenda for the South West. We have never hidden this agenda from public view as it was made public as far back as February 2021 when we declared our preference for a Yoruba Muslim president.

“We anchored our cassus belli for this preference on the persecution of Yoruba Muslims by their Christian neighbours and we rationalised that we need a Yoruba Muslim as president of Nigeria in order to liberate Yoruba Muslims from decades of marginalisation, impoverishment, oppression, persecution, tyranny and injustice. This is a struggle we cannot abandon at this crucial stage.

“This is a special question for the vice president. Nigerian Muslims want to know.

Read also: ‘I have no son old enough to declare’, Tinubu reacts to #OsinbajoDeclares

“If Osinbajo is basking in the born-to-rule syndrome of the RCCG, he should remember that a Muslim, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, brought him to limelight when he served under him as a commissioner in his cabinet.

“No matter how much they try to rewrite history, nobody can wish that fact away. The same Tinubu brought up your name ab initio in connection with his current position in Aso Rock.

“If the above is true (and it is), the fact that Tinubu declared on 22nd January, 2022, when he met President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock makes Osinbajo’s declaration look like a stab in the back.

“There is something immoral about Osinbajo’s declarationIt stands in contradistinction to a cardinal Yoruba concept, the ‘omoluabi’ concept. . It is absolutely ‘unomoluabi’.

“Even the RCCG angle now becomes more interesting. Osinbajo’s declaration comes across as pure evangelisation particularly in view of the declaration of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) directing all its parishes to open political offices in support of its members seeking political posts.”

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now