Enenche Fires Back as Religion, Politics Collide Again
ABUJA, Nigeria — Senior Pastor of Dunamis International Christian Centre, Paul Enenche, has launched a blistering response to Islamic cleric Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir over remarks reportedly portraying Christians as subordinate to Muslims in Nigeria, warning that no religious or political constituency has the authority to reduce Christianity to a secondary status in the country.
Enenche, speaking during a Sunday service, described the reported position as “insanity” and “mental dementia”, arguing that the geographical and demographic reality of Nigeria makes any attempt to depict Christians as an inferior religious community fundamentally indefensible.
The confrontation comes at a particularly combustible moment. Nigeria is already entering an increasingly intense phase of political realignment ahead of the 2027 elections, with President Bola Tinubu’s decision to retain Vice-President Kashim Shettima as his running mate again placing the Muslim-Muslim ticket at the centre of national debate.
That political controversy has now intersected with a broader argument about religious identity, numerical strength, constitutional equality and the language used by influential clerics when mobilising their followers.
Enenche said he had been away on a crusade during the previous week and only became aware of the controversy after his return.
“I was away for a crusade this week past and I heard that a frenzy was going on where I think an insane man was seen saying Christianity is a subordinate religion to other religions in Nigeria.”
The pastor then escalated his criticism.
“It takes insanity, mental dementia, either criminality, insanity or both, either in the prison or asylum, that’s where such people belong, either in the prison or mental home, to say that Christians are secondary to any other religion. The Lord rebuke you. Christianity is not secondary and no group of fanatics will make it so.”
The language represents one of the sharpest recent interventions by a prominent Christian leader into Nigeria’s increasingly sensitive argument over religious representation.
The Jingir Remarks That Triggered the Backlash
The controversy centres on remarks reportedly made by Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir at a gathering attended by several political figures, including Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf.
According to the account supplied to Atlantic Post, Jingir urged Muslims to obtain their Permanent Voter Cards and mobilise behind Muslim-Muslim tickets in future elections, arguing that such political participation would demonstrate to what he reportedly referred to as “the infidels” that Muslims constitute the majority.
Those comments, if accurately reported, go beyond ordinary political advocacy.
There is nothing legally improper about Nigerian Muslims supporting Muslim candidates, just as Christians are entitled to support Christian candidates. The more consequential question is whether electoral mobilisation is being framed around the proposition that one faith possesses a superior political status over another.
That distinction matters enormously in a country where religious identity routinely overlaps with geography, ethnicity, political allegiance and perceptions of security.
The constitutional framework does not establish a hierarchy between Nigeria’s major faiths. Section 10 of the Constitution provides that neither the Federal Government nor a state government shall adopt any religion as a state religion. Section 38 guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, while Section 42 prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion.
The constitutional architecture, therefore, is one of religious freedom and equal citizenship rather than religious supremacy.
Enenche Challenges the Idea of Christian Inferiority
Enenche rejected the apparent premise that Christianity should be treated as secondary because of the religious composition of particular regions.
“If you have sense, take a look around, there is no part of Nigeria whether in Sokoto or Maiduguri, Yobe that Christians are not there en masse.”
He continued:
“For the demon that possesses you, God rebuke you, God rebuke the demon that spoke through you.”
The central factual argument behind the pastor’s response is important.
Nigeria’s religious geography is uneven. Islam is predominant in much of the North-West and North-East, while Christianity is predominant across much of the South-East and South-South; the North-Central and South-West are considerably more mixed. International religious-freedom assessments have repeatedly documented substantial Christian communities in predominantly Muslim northern states and substantial Muslim communities in predominantly Christian southern areas.
That reality makes crude descriptions of Nigeria as belonging exclusively to one faith particularly problematic.
The country is not divided into two hermetically sealed religious territories. Families, businesses, markets, universities, political parties and communities routinely contain members of both faiths.
Indeed, a recent effort by more than 50 Muslim and Christian leaders to sign an interfaith peace accord in Abuja underscored the continuing need for religious coexistence, particularly as Nigeria moves towards another presidential election cycle. Reuters reported that the initiative included a commitment to promote religious harmony and curb extremism and hate speech.
The Numbers Problem: Who Is Actually the Majority?
One of the most significant elements of Enenche’s intervention was his challenge to assertions about religious numerical superiority.
“If you think you are superior, why did you not take the census all this while, credible census and if you want it done, let everyone state what they believe in, you will be shocked.”
That argument exposes a major weakness in claims that either of Nigeria’s two largest religious communities can definitively establish national numerical dominance through official census figures.
Nigeria’s 2006 national census did not ask respondents to state their religion. The National Population Commission has also previously confirmed that religion and ethnicity were excluded from census questionnaires because of their sensitivity within Nigeria’s political environment.
Consequently, there is no current official national census dataset capable of proving precisely how many Nigerians are Muslim, Christian, followers of traditional religions or unaffiliated.
Various surveys and demographic models have produced estimates. Pew research has historically placed Nigeria close to an even Muslim-Christian split, while U.S. religious-freedom reporting has likewise described the country as approximately evenly divided, with differences depending upon the year and methodology used.
This is why the political deployment of religious percentages can become dangerous.
When statistics are uncertain but are presented as indisputable fact, numbers stop functioning as demographic information and begin functioning as political ammunition.
Why the “Infidel” Reference Has Become So Controversial
The reported use of the word “infidels” is at the heart of another criticism from the Christian Association of Nigeria leadership in the 19 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory.
CAN regional chairman Rev. John Hayab reportedly condemned the reference, arguing that describing Christians in such language could inflame already fragile religious relations.
Hayab’s objection was not, according to the account supplied to Atlantic Post, that Muslims should be prohibited from supporting Muslim candidates.
Instead, he drew a distinction between political preference and religious denigration.
“The man did not say it in his room; he said it in the presence of three governors, and they were all smiling. This is an action that should have been rebuked instantly.”
Hayab reportedly argued that referring to Christians as “infidels” was derogatory and could contribute to hatred and violence.
The significance of that warning cannot be dismissed lightly.
Nigeria has experienced decades of deadly violence in which religious identity has sometimes been manipulated by insurgents, extremists, militias and political actors. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2026 reporting described Nigeria’s religious-freedom environment as deeply troubled, citing continuing attacks on religious communities by non-state actors alongside problems of state protection and accountability.
USCIRF has also warned that the politicisation of religion, localised religious discrimination and identity-based violence can reinforce one another.
That context makes the vocabulary used by prominent clerics particularly consequential.
A statement delivered to thousands of followers, or made before elected officials, does not remain confined to the room in which it was spoken. It can be clipped, translated, reposted and weaponised across social-media platforms within minutes.
Enenche: “Nobody Should Take the Body of Christ for Granted”
Enenche made clear that he regarded the issue as larger than a disagreement between two clerics.
“No religious group, no political group will ever make Christianity secondary. Nobody should take the body of Christ for granted.”
His intervention is likely to resonate strongly among Christian constituencies already uneasy about the political consequences of the APC’s decision to maintain the Tinubu-Shettima Muslim-Muslim ticket for 2027.
But the political picture is more complicated than a simple Muslim-versus-Christian divide.
There are Christians who defend the Tinubu-Shettima ticket on grounds of competence and performance. There are Muslims who criticise the arrangement as politically divisive. There are northern Christians who support the ticket, just as there are Muslims who oppose it.
The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, for example, recently rejected the Muslim-Muslim ticket on the grounds that Nigeria is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic nation. In contrast, a northern Christian association has publicly backed the Tinubu-Shettima arrangement, arguing that governance and competence should take precedence over religious calculations.
That divergence is instructive.
There is no single “Christian position” on the 2027 presidential ticket, just as there is no single Muslim position.
The political argument is therefore not simply about which religion is larger. It is also about whether Nigeria should continue to treat religious balance as an important component of political representation.
The Constitutional Red Line
The most important distinction in this controversy is between private religious belief and public political equality.
Nigerians are constitutionally entitled to practise, propagate and change their religion. They are also protected against religious discrimination by government.
A Muslim cleric may campaign for Muslim political candidates.
A Christian pastor may campaign for Christian candidates.
A citizen may vote according to religious conviction.
But none of those political freedoms creates a constitutional licence to declare another class of Nigerians inherently inferior.
That is where the language of religious subordination becomes especially dangerous.
The Nigerian state is not constitutionally structured as a Muslim state or a Christian state. The government is prohibited from adopting an official religion, while citizens are guaranteed religious freedom.
Consequently, the political legitimacy of a candidate does not derive from the candidate’s religion.
It derives from the vote.
Enenche Turns the Argument Towards Security
Enenche also challenged what he portrayed as the wider record of the speaker, asking:
“The speaker should ask himself, what contribution have you made in the country other than bloodshed, destruction and inciting violence?”
That allegation should be treated strictly as Enenche’s accusation, not as an established finding of fact.
Nevertheless, it illustrates why inflammatory religious rhetoric has acquired a national-security dimension in Nigeria.
Security agencies have spent years confronting insurgency, banditry, communal violence and extremist propaganda in the North and Middle Belt. USCIRF’s latest reporting documents violent attacks affecting both Christians and Muslims, including assaults on worshippers and religious communities.
In such an environment, public figures have an unusually heavy responsibility to distinguish legitimate political persuasion from language that can be interpreted as religious mobilisation against an opposing community.
That responsibility applies equally to Christian and Muslim leaders.
The Political Context Could Make the Dispute Bigger
The timing of the dispute is almost as important as the words themselves.
President Tinubu’s retention of Kashim Shettima as his running mate has already guaranteed that religious identity will remain part of the 2027 political conversation. Former Kano Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso recently said the Muslim-Muslim ticket “has to be” an issue in the coming election, while other political figures have argued that competence should trump religious considerations.
The debate is therefore unlikely to disappear.
What may change is the intensity.
If political actors begin to frame the 2027 contest as a struggle for religious supremacy rather than a contest over policy, security, economic management, accountability and competence, Nigeria risks importing an already dangerous layer of sectarian competition into an election that will be closely watched across the country.
The recent interfaith peace accord involving more than 50 Muslim and Christian leaders offers a striking contrast to that possibility. Its message was that religious differences should not become a justification for hatred or extremism.
A Warning Beneath the Verbal War
The deeper significance of the Enenche-Jingir confrontation is not simply that one prominent religious leader has attacked another.
It is that two competing visions of Nigeria’s political future are emerging more sharply.
One vision emphasises religious identity and collective voting power.
The other insists that citizenship must remain the foundation of political equality regardless of faith.
Neither Muslims nor Christians need surrender their religious convictions in a democracy.
But democracy becomes fragile when religious identity is transformed from a personal conviction into a measure of political worth.
Enenche’s warning was therefore both theological and political.
“Christianity is not secondary and no group of fanatics will make it so.”
His larger argument was that Nigeria’s Christians cannot be politically demoted by assertion, rhetoric or electoral arithmetic.
And there is a constitutional dimension to that argument: neither Christianity nor Islam is the official religion of Nigeria, and neither is constitutionally entitled to superior citizenship.
The same principle applies in reverse.
Muslims are not second-class citizens in predominantly Christian parts of Nigeria.
Christians are not second-class citizens in predominantly Muslim parts of Nigeria.
The republic belongs to both.
The Battle Ahead Is Bigger Than Two Clerics
As Nigeria moves towards 2027, the country is likely to hear far more arguments about Muslim-Muslim tickets, Christian representation, northern voting blocs, religious demographics and political mobilisation.
The challenge for political leaders and religious authorities will be deciding whether those arguments remain within the boundaries of peaceful democratic competition.
The danger begins when electoral persuasion becomes religious humiliation.
That is why the uproar over the Jingir remarks has travelled beyond the pulpit.
For Enenche and those who share his position, the issue is an attempt to redefine Christianity’s place in Nigeria.
For Jingir’s supporters, the argument may instead be understood as a mobilisation of Muslim political power.
Between those two positions lies the central question Nigeria has repeatedly struggled to answer:
Can citizens pursue political power through religious identity without turning the identity of the other citizen into an enemy?
That question will become harder, not easier, as the 2027 election approaches.
For now, Enenche has drawn his line in unmistakable terms:
“No religious group, no political group will ever make Christianity secondary. Nobody should take the body of Christ for granted.”
The warning, however, extends beyond Christians.
In a country where religious tensions have repeatedly carried a deadly security price, nobody should take Nigeria’s fragile interfaith peace for granted.
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