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<p>By Mohammed Bello Doka</p><div class="LMqKhu5x" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

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<p>We have been hearing funny questions in recent months, asked with a mix of sarcasm and denial: How exactly did Bola Tinubu betray the Muslim North? This article is a response to that question. Not emotion. Not sentiment. Not hatred. This is politics, reduced to its bare essentials: numbers, choices, consequences, and survival. If accusations are anything to go by, they are not inventions; they are reactions to observable facts. And facts, once assembled honestly, do not care about comfort.</p>
<p>The 2023 presidential election marked a deliberate rupture with Nigeria’s post-1999 conventions. Bola Tinubu chose a Muslim–Muslim ticket, fully aware of its implications. This was not accidental, nor was it imposed on him. It was defended vigorously across the North as a necessary sacrifice in the national interest. Muslim voters in the North were told, directly and indirectly, that competence mattered more than sentiment, that religion should not divide them, and that the ticket was a strategic gamble that would pay off in influence, inclusion, and protection. The Muslim North accepted this argument and delivered.</p>
<p>The numbers are not disputed. According to INEC’s final, state-by-state results, the North-West and North-East—Nigeria’s core Muslim-majority zones—produced close to ten million valid votes in the 2023 election. In Kano alone, a Muslim-majority stronghold, Tinubu secured over 517,000 votes, while Peter Obi managed barely 28,000. In Jigawa, Tinubu polled more than 421,000 votes; Obi did not reach 2,000. Katsina gave Tinubu about 482,000 votes to Obi’s roughly 6,000. Kebbi delivered nearly 250,000 votes for Tinubu; Zamfara close to 300,000. In Yobe and Borno, Tinubu again outpolled Obi by margins so wide they require no embellishment. When votes from Muslim-leaning North-Central states such as Niger, Nasarawa, Kwara, and Kogi are added, Tinubu’s support base in Muslim northern communities rises to between 3.8 and 4.9 million votes. That bloc alone formed a decisive pillar of his national victory.</p><div class="LlV8bTCO" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

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<p>Now compare this with what happened in Northern Christian-majority areas. In Plateau State, Peter Obi polled about 466,000 votes, while Tinubu secured roughly 307,000. In Benue, Obi’s 308,000 votes nearly matched Tinubu’s 310,000, despite Benue never having been a Labour Party stronghold. In the Federal Capital Territory, a demographically mixed but largely Christian-leaning territory, Obi recorded 281,717 votes against Tinubu’s 90,902—more than a three-to-one margin. In southern Taraba, voting patterns followed the same logic. These are not anecdotes; they are consistent results pointing to a clear pattern: Muslim northern communities voted overwhelmingly for Tinubu, while Christian northern communities aligned electorally with Christian-majority southern zones.</p>
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<p>This pattern did not emerge by accident. For decades, Northern politics subsumed religious differences under a broader regional consensus. Christians and Muslims in the North often voted together, driven by shared interests in federal power, security, and economic leverage. In 2023, that consensus fractured. Christian-majority areas of the North no longer voted as part of a Northern bloc; they voted as part of a national Christian alignment. That fracture did not begin at the grassroots. It followed elite political decisions that elevated religious identity from a background factor into a central organising principle of national power.</p>
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<p>Having delivered the votes, the Muslim North expected returns. In politics, expectations are not moral demands; they are transactional realities. What followed instead was a growing sense of exclusion. Vice-President Kashim Shettima, presented as proof of northern inclusion, has exercised no visible institutional power commensurate with the region’s contribution. Unlike Atiku Abubakar, who as vice-president chaired the National Economic Council and drove privatisation policy, or Yemi Osinbajo, who chaired key reform committees and acted as president multiple times, Shettima has no defining portfolio. He does not control economic policy. He does not lead the national security architecture. He does not arbitrate party power. His presence is symbolic, not structural.</p>
<p>Appointments have reinforced this perception. Power in Abuja is not measured by the number of northerners in government; it is measured by where decision-making authority sits. Since May 2023, strategic economic and fiscal power has been perceived—rightly or wrongly, but persistently—to be concentrated within a narrow circle outside the Muslim North’s political reach. In Nigerian politics, sustained perception becomes reality. Regions do not rebel because they are ignored once; they react because they feel ignored consistently.</p>
<p>Insecurity has deepened this sense of betrayal. According to data from ACLED and corroborated by local security analysts, the North-West remains the epicentre of banditry and mass kidnapping. Thousands have been killed or displaced since Tinubu assumed office. Farmlands across Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, and Niger states remain unsafe, directly threatening food security. Yet there has been no decisive break from past security failures. No doctrine shift. No overwhelming show of force that signals a new era. Instead, communities are left to negotiate survival, often informally, while the federal response remains incremental and cautious.</p>
<p>The handling of negotiations with armed groups has compounded the anger. Several northern states continue to engage bandits through intermediaries, amnesty offers, or ransom-mediated releases. These practices predate Tinubu, but the absence of a clear federal prohibition or framework under his administration has consequences. In security studies, this creates moral hazard. Violence becomes a bargaining tool. The blunt question many northerners ask is unavoidable: what incentive does a young man have to farm or trade when picking up a gun attracts dialogue, attention, and concessions?</p>
<p>Supporters of the president often dismiss northern grievances as religious intolerance. That argument collapses under scrutiny. The same logic used to explain Obi’s landslide in the South-East and his strong showing in Lagos—identity mobilisation—explains voting behaviour in Northern Christian zones. Lagos itself exposes the hypocrisy. Tinubu lost Lagos, his political base, where he polled 572,606 votes against Obi’s 582,454. Ethnicity did not save him there. Identity politics did. If identity voting is a valid explanation in Lagos, it cannot be dismissed as hatred when the North responds politically to perceived exclusion.</p>
<p>Underlying these grievances is history. Nigeria’s constitution speaks of democratic choice, but Nigeria’s politics practises managed succession. Obasanjo’s role in installing Yar’Adua in 2007 is undisputed. The consolidation of APC power ahead of 2023 advantaged Tinubu decisively. Against this backdrop, fears in the North that incumbency could again be used to shape future political outcomes are not paranoia; they are historical inference.</p>
<p>This is why rumours of fragmentation or political marginalisation resonate so deeply in the North. The region is landlocked, security-fragile, and economically interconnected. Any national rupture—formal or informal—would hurt the North first and hardest. When trust erodes between a region and the centre, fear fills the vacuum. Silence from power does not reassure; it amplifies suspicion.</p>
<p>Beyond Islam and Christianity lies a more fundamental issue: survival as a political force. Divide the North internally, weaken its bargaining unity, and its influence diminishes without a single dramatic announcement. History shows that fragmented regions lose leverage quietly and permanently. Once cohesion is gone, recovery is generational.</p>
<p>This is not an emotional argument. It is a political diagnosis. Betrayal, in politics, describes unmet expectations after commitments are honoured. The Muslim North delivered votes in unprecedented numbers. It absorbed political risk. It defended an unconventional ticket. What it sees in return is limited influence, persistent insecurity, and a fracture in its internal cohesion.</p>
<p>The question, therefore, is no longer whether the accusation exists. It clearly does. The real question is whether it will be confronted honestly while there is still time to repair trust—or whether denial will harden grievance into something far more dangerous. Politics rewards foresight. It punishes complacency. The Muslim North is not asking for sympathy; it is demanding recognition of facts that are already on record.</p>
<p>Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com</p>
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