MURIC said this in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, as the group expressed appreciation to the Northern region of Nigeria for keeping its promise of power shift to the Southern region of the country.
An Islamic rights advocacy group, Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has said the declaration of the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, as the winner of the 2023 presidential election has proved wrong, people who claim that Northern Muslims regard Southern Muslims as slaves.
MURIC said this in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, as the group expressed appreciation to the Northern region of Nigeria for keeping its promise of power shift to the Southern region of the country.
The group described the North as the bastion of honour, the citadel of nobility and the abode of integrity in Nigeria.
"They are always eager to tell Southern Muslims that Northerners would not pray behind them. They are always anxious to let Southern Muslims know that Northerners regard them as their slaves.
“They spread false information about Northerners and Muslims. We were able to counter all these. They resorted to blackmail and threats against MURIC when all their tricks failed yet we were not bothered,” MURIC said.
MURIC further stated, "It is an open secret that Nigeria's political parties resolved to shift power to the South in the buildup to the 2023 general elections. It was argued that it would be unfair to the South if another Northerner succeeds President Muhammadu Buhari, a Northern Fulani.
"Although all eyes were on the two major political parties to implement this unwritten agreement, only the All People's Congress (APC) implemented it by picking Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Southern Yoruba. The main opposition party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP), reneged and fielded Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, another Northern Fulani.
"This resulted in friction within the PDP leading to the emergence of the G-5 group. Palpable tension gripped the South as doubts were expressed about the sincerity of Northerners. Cynics argued that the North would not keep its promise since they now have one of their own, a Fulani, as the PDP presidential candidate.
"MURIC in particular was derided by non-Muslims in the South. We were called slaves of the North. But we stood our ground. We insisted that we trusted the North, particularly on the basis of understandings reached and pledges made at various Islamic fora on MURIC's avowed project for the emergence of a Yoruba Muslim president.”
According to MURIC, "The ground-breaking decision came just before the parties' primaries when 12 Northern governors (the Noble Dozen) insisted that power must shift to the
It said, "A brief analysis of the results of the presidential election reveals that Tinubu polled the lion’s share of his votes in the North to give him his much-needed victory. Working on approximate figures without claiming any mathematical exactitude, the total scores of Tinubu in the South was 3,196,040 whereas he garnered 5,598,686 in the North, a difference of about two and a half million. This gave him a grand total of 8,794,726. He scored 127,370 votes in the South East, 799,957 in the South-South and 2,279,407 in the South West.”
It stated that the outcome of the presidential election showed that Northern votes won the election for Tinubu, adding that the Northern figure almost doubled what he scored in the South and that it showed that Northerners stood by their words.
“They walked their talks. They took the path of honour and nobility. They abandoned a Northern Fulani candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and voted for a Southern Yoruba Muslim candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
"We doff our hats for the North. We salute integrity. The North is a reliable friend by all standards. The region stood behind Tinubu, a Southern Muslim, like the Rock of Gibraltar.”
"It is a big lesson for Southern Muslims who still entertain doubts about their Northern brethren. It is a big blow for non-Muslims whose hobby is to create wedges between Southern Muslims and their Northern counterparts. They sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion in the minds of Southern Muslims against their Muslim brothers in the North,” it said.