Former Kogi West senator Dino Melaye has challenged President Bola Tinubu to a Qur’an recitation contest once the President returns from Saudi Arabia, reviving a taunt he first aimed at Tinubu during the 2023 election campaign.
Melaye made the challenge in a post on his X handle on Monday, timing it to Tinubu’s ongoing pilgrimage. He said he was ready to face the President in a recitation duel the moment he lands back home, insisting that no one can mock God.
The jab lands in the middle of a trip the Presidency has framed as purely spiritual. Tinubu left Abuja on 29 October for Makkah to perform Umrah, the lesser Hajj, and the Saudi Press Agency confirmed he performed the rites at the Grand Mosque the following day. His media team said he prayed for Nigeria’s peace, unity and stability.
The pilgrimage has drawn political commentary from the outset. It came only weeks after Tinubu returned from an extended stay in Europe, and some opposition figures questioned its purpose. Activist Omoyele Sowore claimed the President had travelled for medical treatment, a suggestion his aides firmly rejected. Atiku Abubakar, for his part, demanded that the trip be backed with daily evidence of the President’s activities in the Holy Land.
Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has been posting details of the President’s spiritual activities, including his visit to the Ka’abah in Makkah. It was against that backdrop that Melaye, never one to pass up a stage, stepped in with his challenge.
This is familiar ground for him. Ahead of the 2023 poll, while serving as a spokesman for the Peoples Democratic Party campaign, Melaye released videos of what he called a Fatiha recitation challenge and claimed he had bettered Tinubu, going as far as branding the then candidate an “emergency Muslim” learning the faith for political gain. Tinubu’s camp has long waved off such attacks as theatrics.
There has been no response from the President or his spokesmen to the latest dare, and Tinubu is expected back in the country only this week. Whether he answers Melaye or ignores him, as he did three years ago, remains to be seen.
For Melaye, the move keeps his name in circulation and needles a President whose faith has repeatedly been questioned by rivals. For the Presidency, it is the kind of sideshow it would rather starve of attention, especially while Tinubu is presenting the journey as a moment of devotion and prayer for the country.