Nation
Bakare, Kukah criticise Tinubu’s policies, bemoan rising insecurity
Former presidential aspirant and presiding overseer of the Lagos-based Global Community Citadel Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has sounded a note of warning that under President Bola Tinubu, Nigeria is in danger of popular uprising unless the administration takes a drastic action on security and the economy.
Addressing worshippers during his Easter State-of-the-Nation broadcast in Ikeja, the former APC presidential aspirant asserted that the country is teetering on the brink amid renewed wave of killings in Plateau, Benue and Enugu.
He stressed that Nigeria needs Joseph-type visionaries, not “motor‑park politics.”
Bakare said, “Fellow citizens, at the centre of this political banditry, is the motor park brand of politics nurtured by the old brigade politicians and, in recent times, by President Bola Tinubu.
“Those responsible for steering the course of our nation lack the humility and character this moment demands…What we have seen since the beginning of the year is a descent into tyranny and the brazen abuse of power.”
Bakare noted that the economic stress imposed by fuel‑subsidy removal, naira devaluation and runaway inflation is precipitously dragging citizens to the brink.
Despite headline inflation easing to 23.18 per cent in February after hitting a 28-year peak in 2024, food prices remained relatively high. Once N460/$ before the unification of the exchange rate, the naira now hovers near N1,500. More so, forex scarcity and eroded margins have led to the recent exit of corporates from Diageo to Unilever from the Nigerian market.
In the latter months of 2024, food‑price spikes triggered fatal stampedes as crowds flooded charity events to claim food items such as rice, while the World Bank estimates that more than one million Nigerians fell into “severe food insecurity” in the past 12 months.
“The stampede deaths in several cities at the end of 2024 were the most horrific climax to the economic hardships experienced by Nigerians.
“The heartbreaking reports of parents throwing their children over a fence in Ibadan to ensure access to charity food distribution, leading to the deaths of over 35 children, were tragically almost reminiscent of the biblical famine in Samaria during which parents resorted to eating their children for survival,” the Pastor affirmed.
Recall that since the beginning of April, more than 120 locals have been brutally killed, hacked or burned to death in Plateau State alone, according to Amnesty International and multiple eyewitness accounts. Relief agencies argue that the toll is much higher, referencing coordinated night raids on Bokkos and Bassa that left burnt homes and 3,000 displaced. In Benue, at least 56 people were killed in Logo and Gbagir after twin assaults blamed on armed herders.
Bakare cited a July 2024 report by the Financial Times, which accused the President of allowing the naira to enter free-fall, “fuelling imported inflation and triggering the worst cost of living crisis in a generation…These measures have pushed tens of millions of already impoverished people deeper into misery.”
The clergyman, who participated in the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protests, said there is little patience left in the streets as the economic situation could trigger a people-led revolt if unchecked.
“People of faith have prayed to the point of weariness, and any call for prayer now appears to be a mere religious ritual.
“Some have concluded that we have prayed long enough and that unless certain pragmatic steps are taken with immediate effect, the rage of the poor may engineer social, economic, and political worst-case scenarios,” he argued.
He pointed accusing fingers at Tinubu for reducing the National Assembly to “a haven for legislative rascality” and the 48th member of his cabinet.
“Through its actions and inactions, the National Assembly has, in effect, become the 48th member of the President’s cabinet, while a cabinet minister has, more or less, become a third-term state governor in Rivers State, pampered by the indulgences of the President.
“Mr. President, it is through your influence that the Nigerian National Assembly has become a haven for legislative rascality. Mr. President, it is under your watch that the National Assembly has become an extension of the executive, grossly violating the principles of separation of powers and rubber-stamping the whims and caprices of your office, all while singing the international anthem of sycophants: “On your mandate, we shall stand.”
“Mr. President, thanks to your political machinations, Nigeria is now bedevilled by a captured National Assembly, the most ineffective in its checks-and-balances role since the start of the Fourth Republic. This National Assembly, the Tenth, has by its unconstitutional endorsement of the President’s abuse of powers proven to be the most spineless in our recent history,” he argued.
Bakare urged Tinubu to sack under‑performing aides and appoint persons of impeccable integrity…reputed for transparency and accountability.
He outlined his five-point plan, which includes creating a Consolidated Value Investment and Development Fund to mobilise diaspora capital and repatriated loot; launching a Reform Amelioration Incentive Scheme to cushion the poor; restructuring security into local, state, and zonal forces; empowering a nonpartisan Directorate of National Intelligence; and “heal and unite the nation” through justice and reconciliation.
“No man is wise enough nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power,” he told the President.
Bakare added, “Please, stop playing God! Nigeria is too delicate for this kind of politics.”
However, Bakare acknowledged some positive developments under Tinubu. He cited the increase in Nigeria’s foreign reserves from $35bn in May 2023 to $40bn by November 2024. He warned that these achievements should not overshadow the broader challenges facing the country.
In his own moving Easter message during the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto delivered urgent plea to President Bola Tinubu, calling on him to save Nigerians from what he described as “a cross of pain, brutality, and hopelessness.”
Using powerful biblical metaphors, Bishop Kukah likened the current state of Nigeria to the crucifixion of Christ, painting a grim picture of a nation besieged by insecurity, hunger, poverty, and moral decay.
“Mr. President, Nigeria is reaching a breaking point. The nation is gradually becoming a huge national morgue… With a greater sense of urgency, hasten to bring us down from this cross of evil,” Kukah said.
While acknowledging that President Tinubu did not create many problems currently afflicting the nation, Kukah emphasised that it is now his responsibility to lead the country toward healing and restoration.
“You neither erected this cross nor effected our collective crucifixion…Yet, Nigerians have been dangling and bleeding on this cross of pain for too long,” he added.
Kukah lambasted the President for rising insecurity, citing the rise in kidnappings and the entrenchment of violence across communities, as well as the socio-economic hardship worsened by subsidy removal and inflation.
“Mr. President, please bring us down from this painful cross of hunger,” the cleric pleaded, urging the government to make food security a fundamental human right.
The bishop also pointed fingers at political actors, who, in the past, allegedly imported violence as a tool for political gains.
He warned that the cancer of insecurity had now multiplied and threatened the very foundation of Nigeria.
“Are Nigerians lambs being sacrificed to an unknown god?” he asked pointedly, questioning the sincerity and effectiveness of the government’s response to national insecurity.
