TheCable

Emmanuel Bwacha, senate deputy minority leader, says incompetent politicians are responsible for the ethno-religious crisis in Nigeria.

In an interview with NAN on Wednesday, Bwacha, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said 80 percent of politicians capitalise on ethnic and religious differences to get elected.

He urged the electorate, particularly residents of Taraba state, to vote wisely so as to prevent “wicked politicians from using religion to score cheap political goals”.

“I want to say clearly that this situation is not peculiar to Taraba state, it is a national problem,” he said.

“It is a national problem that is fuelled by bad leadership because when people have a lot of inadequacies and they are suffering from complex, they often resort to either religion or ethnocentrism and geo-politics.

“And this will continue to play because a lot of people come to contest election not because they have the capacity but because they want to capitalise on tribe or religion as a tool to advance their political interest. 80 percent of most of our politicians depend on this because most of them don’t have the capacity, they are hanging on to primordial sentiments and we will continue to suffer this problem.”

The lawmaker warned fellow politicians to stop promoting religious politics because “God cherishes just and fair leaders not religious bigot”.

“There are unserious Muslims and unserious Christians and in the category of these unserious ones, they actually constitute the troublemakers,” he said.

“Both Muslims and Christians meet to steal the commonwealth and later they will be talking about religion.

“Most of them are criminals and this is the problem we have in this country. Until people understand this, the nation cannot move forward

“God is not a god of religious politics. You see Christians and Muslims coming together to steal money from the treasury and they go the village and preach hatred and deepen the division.”