By Habeeb Opeyemi Daranijo
I read with disbelief regarding the video circulating from Saki’s Maulid Nabiy celebration in which Hon. Ibrahim Shittu, our own representative for Saki West at the Oyo State House of Assembly, told a gathering of Muslims that “any political party with a Christian guber candidate must not be voted for,” warning that “if such a person is voted in, Islam would suffer.” I am writing this not as a politician, not as a cleric, but as a son of Saki, a Muslim, a student of Arabic scholarship, and someone who owes his earliest education to a Christian institution—Elam Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Oke-Adagba, Saki. If Islam suffers because a Christian occupies Agodi Government House, then I ask Hon. Shittu plainly: has Islam suffered in Saki, where Muslims and Christians have shared markets, classrooms, hospitals, and family compounds for generations without incident?
The Saki that Hon. Shittu claims to speak for is not the Saki I know. It is not the Saki our elders built. Almost every household in this town, mine included, has Christians as blood relatives, in-laws, schoolmates, and lifelong friends. This is not an abstraction; it is how we live, day to day, without needing a politician’s permission to coexist. Our Chief Imam, Sheikh Azeez Jejekunmi, does not use the mimbar every Friday to divide us — he uses it to pray for both our Muslim and Christian leaders alike, among them Hon. Hannah Ogunesan, Hon. Gbenga Agboola, and Hon. Niyi Adebisi. That is the true religious temperament of this town, and it has nothing to do with what Hon. Shittu said in that video.
Saki’s traditional institutions themselves reflect this balance far better than Hon. Shittu’s outburst does. The Okere-in-Council, our most powerful traditional institution, sits across religious lines without friction. The Bakoja of Sakiland, a Christian, attends Muslim programs as a matter of course, and no one in this town blinks at that, because that is simply how we do good among ourselves. Saki Parapo, one of the most influential socio-political groups in the town, is led by a Christian, and it has consistently worked to preserve, not threaten, the unity Hon. Shittu now recklessly puts at risk.
History bears this out even more clearly through the record of Hon. Shittu’s own predecessors in that same Saki West seat, men who understood that representing this town meant representing all of it. Hon. Wasiu Musa donated buildings to Muslim Hospital, Saki, and did the same for Baptist Hospital, Saki. Hon. Tunji Rafiu Kunle gave a bus to the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Saki and matched it with a donation to the Christian Association in Saki. Hon. Akin Ajekigbe Bada spread boreholes, motorcycles, and empowerment programs across religious lines without discrimination. Hon. Femi Julius built a TESCOM office that serves Muslims and Christians alike in Saki West constituency. And Hon. Tajudeen Were has sponsored pilgrims to both Jerusalem and Mecca across Saki West, Saki East, and Atisbo federal constituency, donated buses to Ajegunle Baptist Church and to the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and the Christian Association of Nigeria alike, and created employment opportunities for both faiths without favor. That is the standard Saki’s leadership has set for itself. Hon. Shittu’s statement does not raise that standard; it abandons it.
It fell, fittingly, to Hon. Salaudeen Kabeer Adebayo, the Majority Leader of Saki West Local Government, to respond at the same event and remind Hon. Shittu what Saki Muslims actually represent. He was right to do so, and I say this as someone still under the instruction of my own Sheikh, Sheikh Musa Agbarigidaoma, at Arabic school. I am no Alfa, only a student, but what I have been taught and what I apply daily is this: Islam itself makes clear provision for the protection and fair treatment of non-Muslims living within a Muslim-majority polity. Anyone who has genuinely studied the Islamic political tradition knows that religious coexistence is not a compromise of faith; it is consistent with it. Hon. Shittu’s framing, that a Christian governor threatens Islam, is not Islamic scholarship. It is political opportunism wearing religious clothing, and it deserves to be named as such.
It is no surprise that Hon. Shittu’s comments are now trending on X, with many describing Saki Muslims as religious bigots on the strength of one lawmaker’s words. That characterization is false, and it is unfair to a town that has spent generations proving the opposite. Our political terrain has always been one of peace and religious tolerance, not division, and it will remain so long after this controversy fades, because that identity was not built by any single politician and cannot be dismantled by one either. Saki does not need Hon. Shittu to protect its faith. It needs him, and every leader who comes after him, to protect the unity his predecessors worked so hard to build.
