Nigeria’s 2023 Election: How Religion Destroyed Us All

Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election did not merely produce a winner; it exposed a moral and intellectual rot that runs through every layer of Nigerian society: the Muslim political elite, the Christian community, the APC leadership, and the millions of ordinary voters who rewarded cynicism, cowardice, and open religious provocation with their ballots.

No one escaped that season with dignity. The evidence is public, recorded, and unforgivable. In July 2022, Bola Tinubu announced Kashim Shettima as running mate, creating the first same-faith ticket by a major party since the return to democracy in 1999.

No national address was given to explain the decision, no consultation with the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council, no attempt to address the fears of roughly half the population who happen to be Christian. The party that had spent eight years promising inclusion simply declared that religion no longer mattered when power was at stake.

Northern Muslim governors who had earlier insisted on a Christian national chairman to “balance” the ticket discovered overnight that balance was optional. The Sultan of Sokoto and the Jama’atu Nasril Islam, bodies that never hesitate to speak when they feel Islam is threatened, maintained a studied silence.

The message was clear: Muslim solidarity trumps national unity when the presidency is within reach. Five weeks before that announcement, on Pentecost Sunday, gunmen walked into St Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, and shot, hacked, and bombed worshippers to death. At least forty bodies, including children, were counted.

The Islamic State West Africa Province claimed responsibility. Ondo is overwhelmingly Christian. The massacre should have been a national inflection point.

Instead, the same ruling party that could not protect a church on one of Christianity’s holiest days proceeded to present two Muslim candidates without apology. And large sections of the Yoruba Christian elite, pastors, politicians, and social-media influencers told their followers to “vote competence, not religion.”

The blood in Owo had barely dried. Two weeks after the Muslim-Muslim ticket was confirmed, the APC staged what is now remembered as the “Satanic Bishops” charade. Dozens of men in ill-fitting purple and white robes, many later identified as party agents, tailors, and photographers, were paraded at the public unveiling of Shettima as “Christian leaders” endorsing the ticket.

One of them, Joseph Odaudu, later confessed on national television that he was paid one hundred thousand naira and handed a robe. The Christian Association of Nigeria called it sacrilege. The Catholic Secretariat labelled it an insult to the episcopate.

Yet not one APC Christian governor resigned from the campaign in protest, not one major Pentecostal fellowship withdrew support, and on election day, millions of Christians in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, and Ondo still queued under the sun to vote for the same party that had dressed party thugs as bishops.

While all this unfolded, the memory of Deborah Samuel Yakubu was still fresh. In May 2022, a Christian student in Sokoto had been stoned, clubbed, and set on fire by a mob of Muslim students over an alleged WhatsApp message deemed blasphemous.

Kashim Shettima, the man now presented as vice-president-in-waiting, had in 2018 publicly declared that anyone who insults the Prophet, Muslim or not, would face the full wrath of the community. He never retracted the statement, never apologised, never clarified.

Yet on election day, thousands of Christians in the Middle Belt and even in the South danced to campaign songs praising the Tinubu-Shettima ticket because, they said, the opponent was “worse.”

When a leaked telephone conversation surfaced in which Peter Obi appeared to describe the election to Bishop David Oyedepo as a “religious war” and asked for prayers because “Daddy, we need to win this one,” the same Christians who had spent a year excusing massacre, blasphemy justification, and fake bishops suddenly discovered the virtue of secular politics.

Social media timelines filled with claims that the tape was AI-generated, that Peter Obi could never play religious cards, that Labour Party represented pure competence. The selective outrage was breathtaking in its cynicism.

Nor should the Muslim community be allowed to stand on higher moral ground. Many northern elites who knew perfectly well that a same-faith ticket in a country with Nigeria’s history was pouring petrol on glowing embers chose silence or active support because power was finally “coming back home.”

When southern Muslims in parts of Lagos and Kwara were attacked and prevented from voting in areas won by Labour Party, many northern commentators celebrated it as sweet revenge. The same voices that scream marginalisation whenever a southern Christian emerges victorious, suddenly discovered the beauty of majoritarian tyranny when it favoured them.

In the end, the followers were no better than the leaders. Pastors collected tithes for private jets while preaching submission to authority. Imams collected zakat while their youths graduated from the Almajiri systems into banditry and insurgency.

Politicians of every party and faith weaponised God when it was convenient and mocked Him when it was not. And the voters, Christian, Muslim, and none, rewarded them all with their thumbs.

Everything happened in daylight. The Owo massacre. The fake bishops. The unretracted justification of blasphemy killings. The deliberate same-faith ticket. The deleted condolences for Deborah. The “Yes, Daddy” tape.

Every atrocity and every hypocrisy was documented, broadcast, and archived. And Nigeria looked, shrugged, and moved on to the next hashtag.

Until Nigerians, regardless of the name they call God on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, begin to punish assaults on their common humanity with the same ferocity they reserve for assaults on their prophets, the country will continue its descent.

The 2023 election did not create this rot; it merely exposed it in high definition. And every community, Muslim, Christian, politician, cleric, and voter, stared into the mirror and chose to look away.

May whatever God we all claim to serve have mercy on this nation, because we have shown none to one another.

Lawrence Godwin is an independent journalist and Senior Correspondent with TheCityCeleb. He belongs to no political party and worships at no organized religious assembly.