According to Shehu, the Islamic clerics went silent after convincing Nigerians, especially the Muslims to believe that a Muslim-Muslim ticket of Tinubu and Kashim Shettima was best for them.
A businessman in northern Nigeria, Mahdi Shehu, has lambasted Islamic clerics including Sheikhs, Mallams and Ulamas for keeping quiet amid growing hardship, rising insecurity and killings in the country under President Bola Tinubu’s government.
According to Shehu, the Islamic clerics went silent after convincing Nigerians, especially the Muslims to believe that a Muslim-Muslim ticket of Tinubu and Kashim Shettima was best for them.
Shehu said before the 2023 general elections, Islamic clerics including Sheikhs, Mallams and Ulamas sold the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to their followers, convincing them to believe that no Christian of Northern extraction was worthy of being the vice president of Nigeria.
Shehu, who described the Muslim-Muslim ticket as venom, said the Muslim clerics promoted and projected an unwholesome Muslim-Muslim ticket.
He said, "I am asking this question because prior to the 2023 general elections, many Sheikhs with a few exceptions, many Mallams with a few exceptions, Ulamas with a few exceptions, were all over. They took over the pulpit of their mosques, they took over the microphones, they were in all media houses, in all public gazettes, promoting the venom of Muslim-Muslim ticket in wholesale and retail.
"I say it is a venom because in a country with millions of Christians and followers of other influences other than the Muslims, you can't tell me that there is no Christian worth his own soul and name that can be the Vice President from the Northern extraction.
"That is clearly unthinkable, and they know that it is not justifiable and that there is no justice, no equity, no fairness in that Muslim-Muslim ticket, but they went ahead, for some very clear reasons, to promote, protect and project that an unwholesome Muslim-Muslim ticket.
"They influenced their congregations, quoted verses of the Quran, interpreted those verses to serve their own purposes. Before you know it, it was all over in wholesale and retail.
"Majority of the people were convinced that Muslim-Muslim ticket is justifiable, and we saw the results, especially in the Northwest and the Northeast.
"They sold the ticket even though 14 million people in Nigeria said no, the voices of Obi and the voices of Atiku said no. In uniform, over 14 million people said no. Only eight million people that are still doubtful vote into the booby trap.
"Now, it is Muslim-Muslim ticket at play increasing hunger, starvation and insecurity all over the horizon. People are traumatised, confused, bewildered and dislocated. Everybody today in Nigeria is on his own. Everybody for himself, God, survival of the fittest and the devil take the hindermost.”
According to him, when Muhammadu Buhari was also Nigeria’s president, many of the Islamic clerics involved in the negotiations with the Niger military junta on behalf of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) were quiet amid hardship and insecurity.
He continued, "Yet, we are hearing no voices from the Ulamas, the Mallams and the Sheikhs. It is inordinate silence. We only saw them going to Niger to plead for war not to go on, but before Niger, it had been eight years of harvest of deaths under Buhari, harvest of disease, of delay, of decay, of injustice and for evading justice. But they kept quiet.
"They were comfortable with the difficult injury inflicted by Buhari's eight years of disaster. They were comfortable with the thousands of people being killed and slaughtered in the country under Buhari. They were okay that people were being kidnapped, maimed, incapacitated and financially dispossessed.
"They were okay that farmers were not going to the farms. They never went to Buhari, at least known to us. Now, it is time for a Muslim-Muslim ticket, they could go to Niger.
"But we expected them, having sold the ticket of Muslim-Muslim and with the rising poverty and disease in the country, unemployment, declining values, to have the courage, the guts, the audacity, wherewithal and the lever to go and tell Tinubu that we sold you in wholesale and retail, especially to the Muslims, now the whole of Nigerians - Muslims and Christians - are dying of hunger and disease.
"Traders - medium, large scale and small scale, 80 percent of them have had their capital decimated on account of your reckless statement on the very first day you were sworn in where you said no more fuel subsidy. It has decimated 80 percent of all people with capital. It has increased the number of people living in abject multidimensional poverty from 134 million to over 200 million.
"We expected them to tell him proper and plain in open space, but mum, silence is the word. They have gone into inordinate silence as if they have gone into deep slumber. Why don't they want this simple elementary ethical responsibility?
"Ulamas, Sheikhs, Mallams, don't forget that if you are looking away now at a time when Tinubu's government is inflicting injury on the majority of Nigerians and decimating them, if you are looking away because you are comfortable, because you are rich, because you have beautiful shelter over your head, because of various automobiles including bulletproofs at your own possession, because your children go to the best schools, you can afford healthcare and food, do know that nothing is permanent.
"We have seen rich people turning into poor people, healthy people become physically incapacitated, knowledgeable people reduced into nothing.
"Nobody is exempted from this rule from Allah to Allah. If you can't talk now, you will definitely talk - willy-nilly, whether you like it or not on judgment day, Ulamas, Mallams, Sheikhs, Allahramas along with the rich men, people endowed with wealth, leaders - elected and appointed and those who inherited power."
Ahead of the 2023 general elections, Shehu made comments which were condemned by many Nigerians. His critics described the comments as being laced with a lot of tribal and religious slurs aimed at pitching Christians against Muslims.
Mahdi had urged Christians in Northern Nigerians not to vote for Peter Obi of the Labour Party, saying his main agenda was to actualise Biafra Republic.
The activist further said that Northern Christians would derive no benefit if they voted for him because that would not stop them from facing discrimination in the southern region, regardless of their faith.
He said: “This is a message to my northern Christian brothers and sisters, it’s specifically for you. Why? Because if you go to the South-South, Southeast, or Southwest, a Christian from the Northern part of Nigeria is a northerner.
“If there is a breakdown in Enugu, they kill everybody, whether a Muslim or Christian coming from the North. This is the record that is on the ground. Nobody can deny this. Christians of northern extraction, think wisely, behave, you have no business voting for a southern candidate based on Christianity.
“At the end of the day, his agenda is not yours. His agenda is his own tribe. If you pick Obi, his agenda is not Christianity. He could be a categorical Catholic, he is a die-hard Biafran. If you vote Obi, you are voting for a Biafra. No mincing of the words.
“Tell me, a Christian from Taraba, Nasarawa, Kogi, Kwara, Kebbi, Kaduna, Sokoto, Bauchi, or Gombe, tell me the benefit you will derive by voting Obi and the answer is that there is none.
“If you want to know that the answer is true, go to Enugu, go to Aba, go to Nnewi, go to Akwa Ibom, go to every part of the southeast, and ask for land to build a church, you will never have one. But all over the North, there are churches owned by people from the south. The land is owned by them, the church is owned by them.”