Of the few guiding axioms of Nigerian politics, perhaps none is more indelible than the idea that you cannot understand the Nigerian society without reference to religion. The more you know about Nigerians’ spiritual lives and tendencies, it is postulated, the better placed you are to understand the country’s shifting ethnonational, regional, and elite contestations. Put differently, religion is the indispensable key to unlock the enigmas of Nigerian politics.

Given this consensus, it is rather perplexing that, in discussing arguably the most serious and persistent challenge to Nigeria’s stability and continued existence since the political upheaval triggered by the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, a cross section of the commentariat is insisting, not just that religion is not one of many factors to consider, but that the crisis itself has nothing to do with religion, period. Once taken for granted as an all-important source of illumination, religion is now, oddly enough, either totally jettisoned or regarded as a distraction.

In fairness, the commentariat is not alone in its insistence that we disregard religion as the underlying explanation for Nigeria’s present discontents. Senior Nigerian government officials, too, have forcefully rejected accusations that the Nigerian government has directly or tacitly encouraged “genocide” against Nigerian Christians. Some have even ventured to suggest that relations between Nigerians of different religious persuasions have never been more amicable.

Although implausible, the Nigerian government’s official position is perhaps understandable. Politically, President Tinubu finds himself between a rock and a hard place, desperate to preserve the political coalition that he believes he needs in order to win a second four-year term of office come 2027. In practice, this means that he can ill afford to further antagonize a religiously conservative northern political establishment, one that has already expressed displeasure at his administration, and among whom key figures have already defected to the opposition.

This reluctance to antagonize the northern establishment (and consequently the voting bloc that it controls) is also exemplified by Peter Obi, the Labor Party standard-bearer in the 2023 presidential election. After capturing the imagination of a cross section of young Nigerians, Obi had defied expectations by winning eleven states and the Federal Capital Territory , and might even have claimed a most unlikely victory had he been more competitive in the core northern states.

With 2027 approaching and the northern vote no less crucial, Obi, a practicing Catholic, has maintained a studied silence, only going so far as to note in the aftermath of Nigeria’s Country of Particular Concern designation that the country “is experiencing an unprecedented level of insecurity” that “did not start with the present government,” but that the Tinubu administration owes it to Nigerians to “effectively govern, galvanize, and lead Nigeria where (sic) no one is unwarrantedly oppressed and killed.” Notably absent from Obi’s statement was the intensity that made him declare the last presidential context “a religious war” in reference to the prospect of a Muslim-Muslim ticket that many had feared would lead to the increased marginalization of Nigerian Christians.

For the ambitious Nigerian politician, fear of the northern political elite is the beginning of political wisdom.