The Muslim-Muslim ticket that Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate for the All Progressives Congress, and his party chose was only a political ploy, according to the governor of the state of Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi.

Speaking to the new executives of the Ekiti state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), led by its chairman, Emmanuel Aribasoye, on a courtesy visit, Fayemi claimed the decision wasn’t made to denigrate Christians.

The governor, who advocated for increased Christian involvement in politics, also noted that politics is a “game of numbers.”

The statement read;

“I have been talking to both the presidential candidate and other leaders of the party, that we need to take quick steps that we should have taken earlier, by approaching the leadership in Christendom and explain the context of the selection that was about to happen.

“Even if they don’t agree with our choice, they would have seen the sincerity of purpose and understood that the decision was not on ground of competence because we have competent Christians all over Nigeria but on grounds of strategic political moves, which is what we do in politics.

“We have to look at scenarios and calculate where the votes would come from, it is a game of numbers.

“I think it is time for Christians to move away from the theology of disengagement — the notion that politics is dirty and that it is not for a child of God.

“When serious Christians commited to the ideals of social justice and the common good turn away from politics, they open the door for unprincipled opportunists to take power.

“The Christian leadership should use this current challenge as an opportunity to present a charter of demands to all political candidates, especially our party (APC), outlining the irreducible minimum conditions acceptable to Christians in the next political dispensation — a charter of demands that would represent those values you preach to us in church highlighting our concerns, stressing the place of Christendom in the Nigeria project, and then placing our demands before the political leaders.

“I want the Church to organise debates around issues of concerns among all the candidates.”