General Elections in Nigeria and the Challenge of Religious Bigotry

Abstract

Religion has never trumped reason in Nigerian political history as it did in 2023 general elections. Politics in Nigeria has a long history of inter-religious rivalries between the Muslims and the Christians. However, prior to the 2023 general elections, religious politics took more dangerous dimension. It was triggered by the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC). While APC resorted to it as political strategy towards ensuring victory at the poll, many Christians considered it a strategy towards Islamization. Consequently, interfaith bickering ensued and it later snowballed into intra-religious altercation. Reasonability gave way to religious bigotry such that some clerics ex-communicated other clerics of the same faith for holding different political viewpoints concerning some major candidates. This paper argues that religious politics is not inherently dangerous until it becomes bigoted. This paper relies on primary and secondary sources of data and employs Galtung's Theory of Structural Violence to explain the challenge of religious bigotry in Nigerian politics. It finds that it is near impossible to separate religion from politics in Nigeria. It concludes that religion can play a developmental role in politics if differences of political choice are tolerated. It recommends that religion should inspire development; not domination.