I encouraged Buhari to run for president to Nigeria from impending disaster – Bakare

OBINNA EZUGWU

The presiding pastor of Citadel Global Church, Tunde Bakare, has said he was among those who encouraged President Muhammadu Buhari not to quit the stage, but run for power in order to save Nigeria from impending disaster.

Bakare said he played a critical role in Buhari becoming president of Nigeria, because God had shown him in a vision that Buhari still had a role to play in stabilising Nigeria.

The clergyman who made the remarks in a statement on Sunday, however said that the current situation of the country doesn’t represent the Buhari he used to know.

In the statement titled, ‘The Conspicuous Handwriting on the Wall,’ he recalled how he was invited to partner with Buhari as his vice in the presidential election of 2011.

“After initial hesitation, my eventual acceptance was upon the assurance that, amongst other deliverables, our administration would commit to re-engineering Nigeria’s governmental structure with a view to guaranteeing the security & prosperity of our nation & her people,” Bakare said.

“After a vigorous campaign, GMB gave a deeply emotional public statement at a press conference on April 13, 2011 – “I am in this solely for the love of my country and concern for its destiny and the fate of its people.”

He continued, “Some of us prevailed on General Muhammadu Buhari not to quit the stage but to take back his words and form a coalition of the best of the North and the best of the South to salvage our nation.

”I must admit that I played a critical role in that mission. God had shown me in a vision that GMB still had a role to play in stabilising Nigeria.

“I, therefore, facilitated a meeting in the United Kingdom between him and some of our CPC leaders with a view to forming a coalition between CPC and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that could save Nigeria from impending disaster,” he said.

He continued, “As I told the President in some of those engagements, his success is my success, and his failure is my failure. It is why I remain committed to seeing him succeed.

“I am compelled to speak out because the state of the nation does not represent the Buhari I knew when we took that solemn journey towards rebuilding Nigeria.

“I am compelled to cry out because of the intent of the president as contained in his tribute dated October 14, 2019 in honour of my 65th birthday PMB wrote to me: “We have shared ideas on how to engender a better country and formed a tag team for political power. May the ideas germinate fully, proliferate and give us the country of our dreams.

“The purpose of this address is to present the facts of this diagnosis and point a way out of our current crisis even as we approach a critical juncture in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.”

Bakare who lamented the security situation in the country, noted that, “Not even the President’s controversial shoot-on-sight order for illegal bearers of AK-47 guns has proved sufficient to abate these attacks.”