Picture a campaign rally: the candidate raises a Bible overhead, the crowd roars “Amen,” and somewhere between the chorus and the manifesto, faith quietly turns into a marketing tool. It is a familiar scene in Nigerian politics, one that repeats almost exactly every election cycle.
And it points to a bigger problem that few people want to talk about openly: religion and politics in Nigeria have become so mixed together that it is now hard to tell real faith apart from political performance. Religion should guide how people live and treat one another; it should not be used as a tool to win votes. No serious democracy asks its citizens to choose leaders based on faith instead of facts, yet that is exactly what religious endorsement in Nigerian politics quietly asks Nigerians to do.
This is the situation behind the Christian Association of Nigeria’s latest warning. CAN President, Archbishop Daniel Okoh, has cautioned politicians and their supporters against using the name of Jesus Christ to promote their political interests ahead of the 2027 general elections. His message is simple: political debate can be passionate, but it should not come at the cost of dragging something sacred into something as transactional as a campaign.
The warning is timely, but it also raises a harder question, one CAN’s statement only touches on without fully answering. Why does this keep happening, election after election? The answer isn’t really about religion. It’s about trust. In a country where government institutions have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises, faith remains one of the few things Nigerians still believe in without doubt. Politicians know this. Linking a candidate’s name to Christ’s isn’t really about belief; it’s a shortcut past questioning. It asks citizens to give a politician seeking their vote the same unquestioning loyalty they give their faith.
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CAN’s caution to Christians and church leaders is necessary, but it cannot stop at a moral appeal. Churches that allow their pulpits to be used as campaign platforms, and clergy who bless candidates in exchange for money or favors, share responsibility for this problem. If the name of Christ is sacred, as Archbishop Okoh rightly insists, then the institutions built to protect that name must be willing to identify and discipline their own members who abuse it, not just issue statements aimed at politicians.
As 2027 approaches, Nigerians would do well to treat religious endorsement of a candidate as a warning sign rather than a reassurance. A leader’s fitness for office should be measured by their record, their competence, and their accountability to the public, not by how convincingly they can perform religious devotion on a campaign stage. The most faithful thing the church can do this election cycle is refuse to let its trusted name be borrowed by anyone seeking political advantage.
