Dr. Josef Onoh, President Bola Tinubu’s former campaign spokesman in the South East, has sharply responded to former Secretary to the Federal Government (SGF), Babachir Lawal, following his criticism of President Tinubu’s recent attendance at Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration in Rome.
In a televised interview on Wednesday, Lawal questioned the appropriateness of a Muslim president attending a major Catholic event, recalling his previous opposition to the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket during the 2023 elections.
However, Onoh dismissed Lawal’s comments as uninformed, calling the ex-SGF an “ignorant Christian” whose lack of understanding of interfaith dialogue exposes him to ridicule.
Onoh reminded Lawal that multiple Islamic leaders have historically visited the Pope, and vice versa, citing instances where Popes engaged with Islamic leaders—some even visiting mosques—as part of ongoing religious diplomacy.
“You cannot be more Catholic than the Pope himself,” Onoh stated, highlighting that the Pope was fully aware of Tinubu’s faith yet still invited him, a gesture underscoring Nigeria’s commitment to religious pluralism and peaceful coexistence.
According to Onoh, Tinubu’s Vatican visit is consistent with his domestic policies promoting inclusivity, a key theme of his political platform. He said Lawal’s “holy roller” posturing fails to recognize this historic moment, potentially the first time a Muslim Nigerian president attended such an event.
Onoh sarcastically questioned Lawal’s silence when the late Pope Francis, in September 2024, declared that all religions lead to God and compared them to different languages aiming toward the same divine destination.
He also recalled Pope Francis’s 2019 remarks in Morocco about God’s “permissive will” allowing diverse religions, and Pope John Paul II’s 2001 visit to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus—the first papal visit to a mosque.
Further, Onoh cited landmark Catholic-Muslim engagements, including the 2016 meeting between Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, at the Vatican to promote peace and dialogue; Sheikh Al-Tayeb’s invitation to Pope Francis leading to the historic 2019 papal visit to the UAE and the signing of the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” in Abu Dhabi.
He also pointed out their continued meetings in 2018 and the 2024 “Joint Declaration of Istiqlal” signed during Pope Francis’s visit to the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, the Istiqlal Mosque in Indonesia.
Onoh also recalled the 2021 peace meeting between Pope Francis and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, Iraq, as well as the earlier 2001 papal visit to the Umayyad Mosque, reinforcing ongoing interfaith cooperation.
He challenged Lawal’s silence on these historic acts of religious diplomacy, contrasting it with Lawal’s current “intoxicated” criticism of Tinubu’s Vatican attendance.
Onoh further continued with a sharp rebuke: “May we continue to pray to always find ourselves religiously sober than intoxicated in a pious manner, unlike Babachir Lawal, whose comments on President Tinubu are now an embarrassment, not to Christianity, but to himself. In his old age, he speaks like a sophisticated rhetorician inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity.”
