It is a pattern we have come to recognise whenever election is around the corner. Religious leaders step in and play a role in their diverse ways – generally controversial, mostly divisive. Some of them make predictions regarding who will win; it’s within their right more so as religious leaders are believed to have more than two eyes. They see what most humans don’t see. There’re also religious leaders who make no predictions. Instead they point to their preferred political candidate thus imposing their choice on their followers, a phenomenon which shows they don’t believe followers have a mind of their own.
There are religious leaders who don’t engage in either of the two things stated. But they, as some allege, have eagle eyes, always watchful with their ear to the ground, eager to know which politician is sharing what money. They simply want their own share of whatever it is that politicians send down the ladder in each election cycle. In the event they are willing to turn their place of worship into campaign platform, and of course politicians are much obliged. The activity of religious leaders in the three categories has implications for our election and the polity in general. I shall proceed to examine this.
In Nigeria, each election cycle peculiarly unveils two kinds of ‘claws’ that religious leaders have and like to deploy. One is tribalism, the other is religion itself. I focus on the latter more than the former. Religious leaders know the latter is potent in our clime, and many deploy it for both personal and tribal reasons. Sometimes they bring tribalism into the mix as well. There’re parts of the nation where one religion has most members of a tribe as adherents. Here, the dominant mentality is that the religion is for their tribe alone; no other tribe is welcome. Their religion has become their tribal identity. It’s a phenomenon I find surprising because it’s contrary to what most religions have as tenet; it’s even something tribes that are smart don’t try. For they know that the more the diversity of worshipers the more advantages there are for them. So they don’t openly claim their religion for only members of their tribe.
Perhaps, it’s during election cycles the deployment of religion for either personal or tribal reasons is the most dangerous. The mix – religion and tribe – is worse than a keg of gunpowder. When religious leaders use religion to appeal to their tribal members in their campaign for a specific candidate, it has wider implications for the nation. I consider doing such a manifestation of youthful exuberance, because I often wonder how anyone who has religious followers that belong to different political parties can openly support a candidate. It beats reason. Sometimes though, and as I said to someone recently, we may hope to wait to see if exuberant religious leaders (some of who are relatively young) will get into their eighties and nineties and change their worldview in this regard. Age naturally takes certain exuberance away from people, and we actually see greater level of maturity and restraint exercised by religious leaders who are septuagenarians and above.
As already stated, interventions made by religious leaders in election seasons are within their right. How they go about it, the sometimes divisive effect, is the issue. What they focus on should be of concern to all of us as they are some of the most potent influencers around. The religious leader who publicly makes predictions as to who will win in an election is expressing their personal view. One implication though is that whether they get it right or not, they have drawn attention to themselves. The one who gets it right gathers followers who believe in them. The one who gets it wrong has also sown a seed in the minds of people. Their predications can influence the choice of voters as much as their endorsements.
But both prediction and endorsement are fraught with dangers; the most visible of these was what we saw after the 2023 presidential election. Suspicion and disbelief were rife. The claws of religious leaders on Nigerians, like the talons of an eagle, are partly responsible. They have proved that effective. This angle is significant as more mature religious leaders have largely abstained from predicting winners or endorsing candidates. I imagine they do because they have an understanding of the implications on nation and religious followers of the inability to exercise discretion.
Without taking anything away from some of the observations made by election observers, both the prediction and endorsement made by religious leaders contribute to the acrimony witnessed after February 25. How? Religious teachings and beliefs sometimes make some adherents discard reason, facts, what is empirical, verifiable. When religious leaders add their predictions and endorsements, there is a greater effect. For their followers any reality contrary to what the religious leaders say is false. What they are told is what is real. Even when facts on ground show that a candidate has no real chance of winning, such people still believe their candidate must win because their religious leader has said so.
A religious leader’s prediction or endorsement can make people believe that a different outcome must be due to manipulation of results. They believe that what their own candidate wins is credible, but nothing that the opposition candidate wins is credible. It is a confusion that manifested after the February election in Nigeria. The 2019 presidential election in the United States presented the same scenario. Some religious leaders publicly supported Donald Trump of the Republican Party whom they believed represented their religious values. He lost the election and some Americans who professed religion believed it was rigged even though there has been no single evidence to validate such a claim. This has fragmented nation and people more than ever.
Almost three years after the election a sizeable number of Americans, including journalists of certain TV stations, restate fraud claims despite the allegation that in their privacy they ridicule the claim of election fraud. Reports also show that as a result of the claim of vote fraud, some Americans don’t believe in the electoral system anymore. This has even gone a step further to cement the idea in some settings that the democratically elected government in the US could be overthrown. The idea was manifested in the storming of the Capitol Hill by some pro-Trump Americans in January 2020. That’s the size of the implication when religious leaders intervene to predict results or endorse a candidate.
Also in Nigeria, there are reports of religious leaders who openly ask for their share of money that politicians distribute in this election cycle. Notable places of worship assert that some religious entities get the money but others didn’t get any. There has been a loud silence over the allegation though, those who collect money possibly trying to engage in damage control by sending shares in more directions than before. That such a situation was noised was, for me, a confirmation of the position I took over the years in our public space. This is to the effect that religious institutions and those who head them abandon their original task; they are focused on what is not their task. It’s there in their comments, it’s in their actions. It’s a phenomenon I find baffling.
I take a strong exception to the situation not only for the reason that religion is now being deployed for what isn’t its original purpose, but because of the dangers this portends. More so, when sharing of free money is involved even a religious leader can do anything including peddling narrow positions that can threaten the peace of the nation. We have even heard some religious leaders say things that leave one dumbfounded; they make one ask if calling people to the One who calls them is their task or championing ethnic causes.
There is more. The other day a politician claims on social media that a religious leader said some have given him and other religious leaders N10m each, so that they can promote political tickets that have candidates from only one religion. Some would become unabashed mouthpieces of one politician or the other for much less. These are what we increasingly get from religious leaders at every election cycle.
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