By Mohammed Bello Doka
Something dangerous is happening to Nigerian politics, and it wears the garment of religion. A president who cannot secure the lives of worshippers, who presides over an economy that has pushed tens of millions into hunger, and whose police kill teenagers at prayer gatherings has decided that the solution is not competence but choreography. He goes to Mecca. Cameras follow. Prayers are offered. And the message is sent to the North: look at your Muslim president, bowing in the holy city, and ask no further questions
This is the new wave of political deception. It is not the old politics of roads and schools and security. It is the politics of performance, of content creation, of religious theatre designed to manufacture legitimacy where delivery has failed. The Umrah is a sacred act. But when it is undertaken not for the sake of Allah alone but for the purpose of political rehabilitation before a watching electorate, it ceases to be worship and becomes something else entirely. In Islam, this is called riya—the practice of performing an act of worship to be seen by people rather than for the sake of God. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, warned that riya is the minor shirk, the small polytheism that corrupts the intention and empties the deed of its reward. A pilgrimage performed for the cameras, for the applause of a base that is slipping away, is not a spiritual act. It is content. And Nigerians, particularly the Muslims of the North, are not a flock to be herded by spectacle.
The numbers tell a story that no prayer session in Mecca can erase. The World Bank reported in October 2026 that approximately 139 million Nigerians live below the national poverty line, with poverty concentrated overwhelmingly in the northern part of the country . More than 60 million Nigerians are classified as ultra-poor, unable to meet minimum food requirements . The bank stated plainly that while recent reforms had stabilized the macroeconomy, these measures had not translated into better livelihoods for Nigerians . Food inflation stood at 19.59 percent year-on-year in September 2026, meaning that the price of feeding a family continues to climb even as the government celebrates statistical victories . In the North, where the Muslim-Muslim ticket was supposed to deliver a dividend of prosperity and security, the dividend has been hunger, inflation, and despair.
The security picture is worse. In July 2026 alone, SARI Global recorded 596 security incidents and at least 570 confirmed fatalities across Nigeria, with the lethal weight concentrated in Zamfara, Niger, Kaduna, and Benue . Bandit assaults on farming communities repeatedly killed twenty or more people in a single attack . In Borno State, in October 2026, a Divisional Police Officer led his men to a Maulid celebration, complained about the loudspeakers, and when the organizers complied and turned them off, returned with a contingent that opened fire indiscriminately. A boy named Umar Muhammad, fifteen or sixteen years old, was shot dead at close range . Amnesty International’s verdict was damning: this killing exposes a pattern of ruthless human rights violations in which perpetrators are never held to account, and the Nigeria Police, created to protect the people, is gradually becoming a danger to society . A government that cannot protect a child at a religious celebration has no business claiming to protect the faith.
The corruption is not incidental. It is structural. Amnesty International’s February 2026 investigation into the Tiger Base police unit in Imo State found detainees routinely taken from their cells and shot, suspects tortured to extract confessions with iron rods and machetes, and families harassed for seeking justice . The unit operated a point-of-sale business inside the detention centre to collect bribes for release . Few people sent to Cell 1 came out alive . Transparency International’s corruption perception data places Nigeria at 17.1 on a scale where 100 represents no perception of corruption, against a global average of 48.4 . This is not incompetence. It is a system that preys on the vulnerable while the president prays for re-election.
And what of the North, which gave this administration its mandate on the promise of a Muslim-Muslim ticket? The North is beginning to understand the arithmetic. In 2023, the argument was simple: a Muslim president and a Muslim vice-president would protect Muslim interests. But Islam does not measure leadership by the label on the forehead. The Qur’anic principle of Adl demands justice. The principle of Maslaha demands public welfare. The principle of Amanah demands that public trust be guarded, not plundered. Ibn Khaldun taught that the state exists to prevent injustice and protect its subjects. Al-Mawardi wrote that the imamate is established to preserve the faith and manage the affairs of the world. Al-Ghazali warned that governance is the guardian of religion, and when the guardian is flawed, chaos enters the faith. By every measure that Islamic political thought recognizes, this administration has failed.
The Muslim-Muslim ticket was a political strategy, not a divine mandate. It was a calculation designed to consolidate votes in a region where faith matters deeply. But faith cannot be used as a shield against accountability. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that the best jihad is a word of truth before a tyrannical ruler. Muslim clerics who remain silent while their communities are slaughtered, while children starve, while police kill worshippers and extort their families, are not protecting religion. They are protecting power. The silence of the pulpit in the face of this suffering is a betrayal of the very faith it claims to defend.
We cannot continue to vote based on the faith of the candidate when their actions are the antithesis of Islamic governance. The faith of a leader is not what grants him legitimacy in the eyes of God or man. Legitimacy comes from justice, from protection, from the safeguarding of the weak. A president who travels to Mecca to pray for re-election while northern villages bury their dead is not demonstrating piety. He is demonstrating that he has nothing else to offer. The Umrah has become the last refuge of a government that has run out of achievements.
The North must reject this deception in 2027. Not because Tinubu is a Muslim or because he is not, but because he has failed the test that Islam sets for every ruler. He has failed to protect life. He has failed to alleviate hunger. He has failed to uphold justice. He has failed to guard the public trust. No amount of prayer in Mecca can wash away the blood of Taraba, the hunger of the North, or the corruption of the Tiger Base. We are not a flock to be herded, but a community of conscience demanding justice and accountability. The ballot is not a religious ritual. It is a reckoning. And the North, if it remembers its own principles, will make this president reckon with his deeds, not his pilgrimages.
Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com
