Social media influencer, Reno Omokri, has revealed why the next President of Nigeria after President Bola Tinubu’s would be a Muslim from the northern part of the country.
Stating his reason in a post on his X (formerly Twitter) handle on Sunday, Omokri said: “any culture not built on respect for the headship principle is unlikely to attract power.
And to demonstrate the cultural differences between the two most dominant Southern Nigerian groups, we saw a public spat between two prominent artistes, in which one called his own father a “nobody”.
Where I come from, such would warrant a beating by youths of the community, and the errant person would be banned.
But that it was tolerated and even venerated by the artiste’s cultural peers explained a lot. If in the family unit, where the father is meant to be the head, you can call your own father a ‘nobody’ due solely to his lack of financial success, you prove to God that your support for the headship principle is conditional.
If you can contest against a man who brought you from relative political obscurity and made you a national figure by choosing you as his running mate, what is the difference between you and that artiste who called his own father a ‘nobody’?
And that is why it would be difficult for political power to devolve to some Southern peoples. Because their attitude toward the pursuit of power is not organised under one leader, for one purpose, for which every other person within that group subsumes their ego.
Rather, it is a very fire brigade approach. No long term strategic planning. Very sudden and unsubtle.
Take Northerners. They are dispersed all over Nigeria, like some Southerners. But they do not travel back home for pleasure. They travel home for power. They celebrate Christmas, New Year, Ramadan, Sallah and every Eid wherever they are. But when it comes to voter registration and voting, they are more likely to travel back to their bases.
The reverse is the case with some Southern people. They travel back home for pleasure and not for power. Voter registration is not important enough for them to travel. And perhaps they can close their shops for a few hours to register to vote. But if there is any frustration, maybe the machines are not working, or there is a long line, they have no tolerance to wait.
And even though they will not travel home to register to vote and vote, so their votes are concentrated and thereby more powerful, rather than being diluted by being spread out too thinly, they are prepared to return home for pleasure. Christmas and New Year are their peak travel times.
Whenever it pleases God that President Tinubu will leave that seat, the next President will be a Northerner. Likely from the Northeast.
I know it is not what some people want to hear, but the 2023 elections proved a very telling poll due to the greed for power and political desperation of one man.
What it proved is that even when you split the Muslim vote three ways amongst three strong Muslim candidates, a Muslim can still win a Presidential election in Nigeria convincingly.
Nobody knew this for a fact until 2023. Anyone who says they knew this for sure is lying. We suspected, especially after the first almost successful Muslim-Muslim ticket of Chief MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe of 1993. But we never knew it for a fact.
No previous President was bold enough to include religion as a question in Nigeria’s recent censuses, and any demographic information on religion was guesswork.
The famous saying that ‘Nigeria is roughly split 50/50 between Christians and Muslims’ is NOT true.
2023 confirmed that Muslims are an absolute majority in Nigeria. Even as you read this, you are angry because you are controlled by your emotions rather than your rational mind. And that is why a fact annoys you. You expect facts to adjust to your emotions instead of modifying your feelings to reflect the facts.
And this refusal to face reality is why some region will, for the foreseeable future, serve those who make their political calculations on cold, hard facts.
No matter your stubbornness, you cannot be more stubborn than facts.
Oya, insult!