There is perhaps no better time to ask a simple but uncomfortable question: what exactly did the Muslim-Muslim ticket achieve for ordinary Muslims?
During the 2023 elections, Nigerians were told that competence should trump religious balancing. The controversy surrounding the Muslim-Muslim ticket dominated national discourse. Supporters dismissed concerns as sentimental, insisting that governance, not religion, was what mattered.
Three years later, perhaps the most important verdict is no longer political; it is practical.
Can the average Muslim in Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Borno, Osun, Lagos, Ogun , Kaduna, Zamfara or anywhere else honestly say that life has improved because both the President and the Vice President profess the same faith?
If the answer is no, then we must admit that what was marketed as a defining political advantage has, for many ordinary Muslims, become politically symbolic but economically meaningless.
Good governance has never been determined by the faith of those in office. It is measured by whether citizens can afford food, feel safe in their communities, find jobs, educate their children and live with dignity.
Hunger has never stopped to ask whether its victim is Muslim or Christian. Inflation does not distinguish between those who pray in the mosque and those who worship in the church. Kidnappers do not demand to know your denomination before striking.
Perhaps the greatest irony of this entire episode is that some of the loudest champions of the Muslim-Muslim ticket are today among those speaking most passionately about justice, inclusion and fairness. That irony should remind us how quickly political narratives can change when confronted by the realities of governance.
As a lawyer, this debate has always fascinated me because I never saw it as a constitutional issue. The real question was always been political and moral: Would abandoning a long-standing tradition of religious balancing produce governance so exceptional that Nigerians would forget the controversy?
That is the question that the administration should provide us with an honest answer .
If the lives of ordinary Nigerians, Muslims and Christians alike, remain defined by hardship, insecurity and economic uncertainty, then history is unlikely to remember the Muslim-Muslim ticket as a triumph of competence. Rather, it may remember it as another reminder that identity politics can win elections but cannot, on its own, build a nation.
Perhaps the lesson Nigerians should carry into future elections is this: we should become less interested in the religion of those asking for our votes and more interested in their capacity, integrity and commitment to justice.
Because in the end, the true opposite of religious discrimination is not religious domination, it is good governance./Solomon Dalong
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