The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has said he will never call the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, his president.
The cleric and politician, during a webinar on Saturday, alleged a series of malpractices during the 2023 elections, saying the Independent National Electoral Commission made a mess of the electioneering process.
He said this while responding during a Question & Answer session after delivering his speech on the Zoom programme titled ‘Building the New Nigeria: The Role of the Diaspora’ organised by the PTB4Nigeria In Diaspora Group.
The meeting, which began 7pm and was monitored by our correspondent, had over 200 participants.
While speaking earlier during the programme, he said the 2023 elections were below acceptable standards.
When asked if he would be happy to work for the new government as a Minister of Diaspora Engagements, he laughed and said he would say what he said to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), last week.
He said he told Buhari that sometimes he called him President of Nigeria and other times, he called him “My President.”
Bakare said, “Last Wednesday, I was at the Glass House where he (Buhari) has been restricted now because the main house is being renovated. I said I have done that for you. I want you to know that, because of the circumstances of your flying into power on the wings of integrity and incorruptibility, but you’re now passing onto someone who does not have that value.
He said that at “any public lecture anywhere, before this mess is cleared off, I will address Asiwaju (Tinubu) as a President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria but I will never call him my president.”
He said he didn’t participate in the elections, and therefore, no one could say he lost.
Bakare, who participated in the All Progressives Congress presidential primary in June 2022, where nomination forms were sold for N100 million, polled no single vote.
Briefly touching this, he said, “I participated in the primary, and there were hundreds (of persons) who participated only by stepping down, so there is no shame in what we have done. We spoke truth to power.
“I wasn’t there when they voted, I wasn’t there when they scored (me) zero, but we won that badge of zero and badge of honour,” he said, adding that this was because some defeats were more triumphant than victories.
Answering the question, he said if he was called to be a minister under the incoming government, there would be conditions to it, “but I am not desperate to be a minister, not at all. I was offered before but I turned it down. My life is not just to take photographs with the president and shake hands.
“But we will do if it will benefit even one citizen.”
Tinubu will on Monday, May 29, be sworn in as the President of the country.
On Thursday, Tinubu was handed the transition report by Buhari, where he also promised not to disappoint Nigerians.
He pledged to address the security and power crises, among other challenges confronting the country
PUNCH
Ameh David
September 4, 2022 at 8:42 pm
Ugochukwu Agballah is really working hard to make sure that he delivers Enugu state, All these men going to NWC for removal of Ebeanaeje can’t even go to their ward to hold party meeting, they are APC in Abuja and PDP in Enugu … I strongly believe in Ebeanaeje Ugochukwu Agballah, with him Enugu shall rise again. Ugochukwu Agballah remains the state chairman, he is a man for everyone
Abubakar Hadi Ikechukwu
September 4, 2022 at 8:46 pm
All these food is ready politicians should live us and our chairman alone. We have focus, we have target, our target is to win election and we disagree to be distracted
Ebus
September 4, 2022 at 9:10 pm
Those so called stakeholders are only interested in money that will be coming to Enugu for Tinubu’s Campaign. Stakeholders that don’t have a stake in their polling units. Non of them has ever won in his unit.
Mad people everywhere!
Njeze Charles Nwabueze
September 5, 2022 at 5:24 am
Please, these agitators are not stakeholders of APC, as stakeholders they are supposed to be known as men who support the party starting from their pulling units, wards, L.G.As and then the state and if possible the national level. I bet with my inheritance, these men are not known in their wards. These men are just after the Tinubu Campaign funds, which Barr. Ugochukwu Agballah told them that it’s not business as usual, you must work before you reap, there is no way they can remove the capacity chairman because they are not even members of APC. They were planted by the PDP moles, to cause problem among the people of APC, I pity who ever stands with them. Barr. Ugochukwu Agballah is unstoppable, he has been carrying out his duties So profoundly!!! We the known members of APC Love Barr. Ugochukwu Agballah and he remains the chairman of APC Enugu State.
Blessing Odenigbo
September 5, 2022 at 6:56 am
Which stakeholders?. They’re retired politicians, sons of Eli by names Hophnis and phinehases. Our capacity state chairman Hon Chief Barr Ugo Agballah is a goal, he brought light, progress and libration in Enugu State APC and with him lion building is our destination. On Sunday 4 September, all APC members in Enugu State, State executives, local government executives and ward executive passed vote of confidence on him as the best APC State chairman ever.That he should continue his good work as our capacity state chairman. No body will remove or try to remove him. The so called retired stakeholders that can not win their polling unit, want the campaign money that Tinubu is about to bring. That is why they want our capacity state chairman to be removed, because they feels that he will be an obstacle for them. Our gubernatorial candidate chief Uche Nnaji Nwakaibie, said that he doesn’t want any money from Tinubu for campaign, that he is equal to the task. Means he can do the whole campaign with his money to avoid problems. Then after elections that Tinubu will balance him. Lion building is our assurance with Barr Ugoo Agballa, chief Uche Nnaji and Barr George Ogara in Jesus Name.
Osinachi Ezema
September 5, 2022 at 7:47 am
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF AN OPPOSITION PARTY*
If in the discourse of the electoral fortunes, fate and prospects of a sitting or consolidating government, the stakeholders assume its most valuable assets, in the case of even the “most” resurrected of the shooting or revolting government, which is the opposition party, the proposition is exactly to the contrary.
In fact in the case of the shooting government, the leadership of the opposition, if it is really resurrected, must unapologetically dislocate and redirect its energy away from the stakeholders and fixate it on the people, by which I mean the mass of the men and women at the depths of the grassroots; for there and there alone lies its most profound, valuable and reliable electoral asset with which it would both decapitate its often too erring, implacable and pompous historic liability called the (s)takeholders, and shoot down its rival, the sitting “oppressive” party.
If all other histories of political opposition fault this proposition, the Enugu state All Progressives Congress, provides an exception.
The indictment which the so-called urban stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress in Enugu today erupts against themselves is rooted in an entitlement syndrome, a self-inflating socio-political condition best explicable by no other instance with as much perfection as with the sample of the bestriding of the narrow world like a Colossus (to which Cassius refers in the Tragedy of Julius Caesar), where we petty men may walk under their huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves.
But since men at some time are masters of their fates, the fault, dear party faithfuls and Ndi Enugu at large, being not in our stars but in ourselves, that we have been underlings; it is time to remain resolute in our new found resolve and discovery that power in the opposition politics belongs not to (s)takeholders but to us, the people.
Even so, let us, like good Artemidorus in the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, perch by the street near the capitol of the National Working Committee of our great party, the All Progressives Congress, and read to them our most beloved letter about the petitioners and the conspirators.
Whether this be the accident of fortune or the manifestations of an impending doom I know not, but the similarities are clear. The Act is the same as in Julius Caesar, it is Act II, by which I mean, a period for a second presidential candidate to succeed the first ever produced by our party; The Scene is much the same, it is Scene III, the third general election in the history of our party.
So we say, from Enugu, “Sen. Abdullahi Adamu and National Working Committee, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; come not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna, trust not Trebonius: mark well Metellus Cimber: Decius Brutus loves thee not: thou hast wronged Caius Ligarius.
There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent for the campaign funds and against Ugochukwu Agballah and the progress of All Progressives Congress in Enugu State.
There is none amongst those conspirators who has ever won his polling unit or his ward! There is none amongst those traitors who has visited their wards or sponsored their meeting for the past three years! There is none among those petitioners who has ever spoken out against the implacable arrogance and evils of the now 23 years old unproductive quagmire of the People’s Democratic Party in Enugu State!
What stake do they hold then in the party?
If thou beest not immortal, APC, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee! Thy lover,
‘OSINACHI EZEMA.’