The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) has kicked against the adoption of Muslim-Muslim ticket for elective offices ahead of the 2027 general elections, insisting that the political leadership of the country should reflect the nation’s religious and ethnic diversities.

The Christian body said this in a communiqué issued after its meeting of the National Executive Council and signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Dr Sylvanus Ukafia.

This is coming after the All Progressives Congress (APC) adopted President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, both Muslims, for the 2027 presidential election.

PFN said it believed that inclusion was necessary to engender trust and a sense of belonging among the citizens, reiterating its commitment to the unity and stability of Nigeria.

“Nigeria’s diversity should be reflected in leadership”

The fellowship said, “The National Executive Council, NEC, of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) at its duly constituted meeting has taken into consideration recent events affecting the country and wishes to announce the following resolutions to the Nigerian public.

The PFN reiterates its commitment to the oneness, peace and progress of Nigeria. We still believe that our country can only succeed where there is justice, equity, the rule of law and respect for the Constitution.

“The PFN is not in support of the adoption of a Muslim-Muslim ticket to contest for elective public office. Nigeria is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country and its leadership should reflect its diversity. Inclusive governance promotes national unity, mutual trust and belonging to all citizen.”

The body argued that political arrangements must take into account the plural nature of Nigeria and not give the impression that any religious group was being excluded.

PFN Speaks Out Against Bans on Preaching
The fellowship also opposed any proposed legislation or policy that might limit Christian preaching.

It said it “strongly opposes any law or policy that seeks to ban or unduly restrict Christian preaching.”

According to the PFN, such legislation would be “inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which guarantees every citizen the freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression and peaceful assembly.

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The fellowship recognised the power of government to make legal provisions in the interest of public order, but cautioned against using such regulations to limit religious liberty.

It said: “While the PFN supports a legal framework that is necessary to preserve the peace, such regulation should never be a tool to suppress legitimate religious expression and violate fundamental human rights.

“We call on all arms and tiers of government to defend the Constitution, protect the rights of every Nigerian irrespective of faith and ensure that no law discriminates against any religious community.”

The PFN also urged Christians across the country to be peaceful and law abiding in the exercise of their constitutional rights.

It urged believers to remain “peaceful, prayerful, law-abiding and steadfast. “We must continue to show the love of Christ while exercising our constitutional rights responsibly without violence or provocation.

The fellowship also urged for continuous dialogue among the government, religious organisations and civil society groups on issues that may threaten national unity.

We call for meaningful dialogue among the government, religious leaders and civil society to address issues that threaten our national cohesion. Nigeria’s diversity should be a strength to be harnessed and not a weakness to be exploited.

“The PFN remains committed to praying for our nation and to working with all stakeholders to forge a Nigeria that is peaceful, just and prosperous where every citizen is afforded equal protection under the law,” the statement said.

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In a recent interview with OLUSEYE OJO, he said that Nigeria’s growing insecurity, characterised by banditry and terrorism cannot be solved with cold statistics or routine military updates.

Instead, he says, real resolution would only come when President Bola Tinubu sees the gruesome murder, torture or abduction of any citizen through the agonising lens of a grieving parent, where every single victim is not a collateral casualty of statehood but the heart-breaking loss of the President’s own child.
The cleric delivers a prophetic, non-partisan charge to the nation’s political elite against the backdrop of heightened grassroots vulnerabilities, rural displacements, and an economy losing vital foreign investments to safer continental neighbours.

In this interview, Bishop Oke explains the structural constraints of the body of Christ, exposes the sophisticated economic syndicates behind rural terror and takes off the veil on the massive, multi-million naira, humanitarian relief interventions the church quietly deploys across Nigeria’s worst hit regions.

What is the central message the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) is trying to pass across to the authorities at this moment as the level of insecurity across the nation reaches a boiling point?

“We are burdened for Nigeria today because we have lost our sense of value for human life and its sanctity. The level of banditry, kidnapping, violence, insecurity and savage killings all over the Nigerian landscape has risen to an intolerable height. It has come to a point when every single Nigerian ought to cry out against it to God for divine intervention, and to our governments for immediate and effective action.

In Nigeria it is more than taking lives. It shatters our national cohesion, discourages critical foreign investors, is causing a huge brain drain as our brightest minds flee, and fatally erodes the link between the people and the state. It has created a pervasive wave of insecurity and terror that ensures that the Nigerian people no longer feel safe anywhere in their own country. “We are under great pressure as this intolerable violence is tragically being normalised in Nigeria.

You spoke of the loss of humaneness. Can you paint a picture of the specific systemic failures and regional carnage that prompted this urgent cry from the PFN?

We are burdened for the loss of our own humanity. Witness the unchecked rampage of bandits and murderous herdsmen slaughtering Nigerian farmers on their own farms. Look at the Boko Haram insurgents, who are using the noble religion of Islam to perpetrate heinous violence against peaceful Nigerians, completely unchecked across our national landscape.

The destructive historical and ongoing trajectory of this failure. Many Chibok girls remain in captivity years after being abducted en masse by Boko Haram insurgents. “Leah Sharibu remains in chains of bondage by religious kidnappers purely because she refused to renounce her Christian faith and the Nigerian state did nothing. Nothing happened to the killers of Deborah Samuel who was brutally burnt to death in Sokoto by a murderous mob for mentioning the name of Jesus.

Since then, Taraba, Plateau, Benue states and Southern Kaduna have become daily killing fields. Edo, Kogi and Ondo states have similarly not been spared.

“Today, as we speak, some communities in Kwara State have been completely sacked by rampaging bandits armed with sophisticated guns and dangerous weapons.

Innocent people are being killed, raped and kidnapped over and over again in large numbers in Borno, Niger, Sokoto, Kaduna and other states of the federation.

Oyo State is the latest killing field. This culminated in the recent horrific abduction of several teachers and students, with one of the teachers, Mr. Michael Oyedokun, gruesomely beheaded and another shot dead.

During these satanic acts our political elite continued business as usual, as if nothing was going on. “This is an unspeakable and despicable act of terror,” he said.

You have rightly said that the President has to see every citizen as his child. How should that paternal responsibility shape the government’s response to the current socioeconomic collapse and the flight of foreign investment?

Basically, all Nigerians are sons and daughters of the president. The president is the father of all Nigeria and that is a basic principle of leadership and governance. So when one person is killed, one of his children is killed. It should hit home to the leadership in that personal and painful way. When a citizen is brutally beheaded, humiliated, tortured and tormented, crying while they cut off his head, it means one of the president’s children has undergone that horrible treatment.

It should never be a common news item. When the reality truly touches the hearts of our government leaders and they feel the deep personal pain of a father losing a child, then they will stand up and handle these situations decisively. That is what the Nigerian people want. They want a government that feels pain when its people suffer, and a leadership that acts with unwavering resolve to safeguard its home.

In terms of farming, all this violence is definitely affecting not only the farming profession, it is affecting every profession.

Farmers can’t tend their fields for fear of being raped, slaughtered or kidnapped, and this sets off a catastrophic chain reaction throughout the entire economic ecosystem. Food prices go through the roof, supply chains fall apart, and hunger stares the nation in the face. It cripples markets and livelihoods well beyond the agricultural sector.

Look at our position in the world and our economy overall. Right now, there are investors from developed countries who were planning to come to Nigeria because of our strategic advantage as the largest black nation in the world with a massive percentage of highly mobile and enterprising young men. We have a very vibrant, very energetic and very intelligent youth population and this makes Nigeria a particularly attractive market for global capital. They are keen to invest here but the absence of reliable power and the insecurity are forcing them to move their capital to countries like Ghana and South Africa where they consider the business environment to be safer and more predictable.

We are losing billions of dollars in potential investments, losing jobs for our teeming youth, losing our competitive edge on the continent because we have failed to secure our territory.

Therefore, the Nigerian government must rise to the occasion and deal decisively with these criminals in our forests, on our farms, in our cities, and those attacking churches and mosques to slaughter citizens. No criminal should get away with it, no matter where they operate or who they target.

In many of these theatres of conflict the military has been deployed but the killings continue. Where does the disconnect lie?

Our Government clearly lacks firm political will to crush these horrible evils. They have let this cancer grow unchecked, making empty promises that have done absolutely no good.

Our governments are busy rehabilitating so-called repentant Boko Haram killers and even drafting them into our security network instead of crushing terrorism, banditry and the likes! Thus the Nigerian military is getting demilitarised.

And this is why our brave Generals and their brave soldiers are being slaughtered like chicken. Why? Because our security system has been thoroughly infiltrated and internally fatally compromised.

Nigerians are tired of this evil. They are tired of the apparent misplaced attention of the political class on winning elections by all means, rather than focusing the full weight of our law and federal might to crush the killers of Nigerians.

In response to this crisis, the PFN announced a three-day national fasting and prayer session from May 22 to 24, 2026. Could you tell me about the background, the strategic aims and the real political position of the PFN behind this exercise?

The National Executive Council of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria met in the night of May 19, 2026, for fervent prayers and deliberations on the scary state of affairs in the country.

We as a Pentecostal community spread across every single state of Nigeria resolved that we would stand together in spiritual warfare and fast and pray to God our Almighty Father to arise and scatter the enemies of Nigeria.

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