Former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has clarified that his support for the Muslim-Muslim ticket adopted by the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2023 presidential election was a strategic political decision and not based on religion.
Speaking on Channels TV’s Sunday Politics, El-Rufai stressed that the move was aimed solely at winning the election:
“It was a political strategy, not a religious one. When you are contesting an election, you look at every factor that will help you win. It has nothing to do with religion.”
He further cited his own experience in Kaduna, where he also ran a Muslim-Muslim ticket, insisting that Christians were not excluded from governance or appointments under his leadership.
El-Rufai argued that the fears raised by critics — including the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) — were unfounded, as no successful leader would limit governance to only one faith or ethnicity.
The APC ticket of Bola Tinubu (Muslim, South-West) and Kashim Shettima (Muslim, North-East) drew heavy criticism at the time but eventually secured victory in the February 2023 polls with 8.79 million votes. Tinubu was sworn in on 29 May 2023 as Nigeria’s 16th president after the Supreme Court upheld the result.
