The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, says he will never call the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, his president.
Bakare had participated in the All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential primary in June 2022, where nomination forms were sold for N100 million, but did not get a single vote.
He, however, spoke during a webinar on Saturday, alleging series of malpractices during the 2023 elections, by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, thus messing up the whole electioneering process.
The cleric was commenting during the 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 had over 200 participants.
Earlier before the programme, Bakare had 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 Muhammadu Buhari last week.
He said he told Buhari that sometimes he called him President of Nigeria and other times, he called him “My President.”
He further 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.”
Bakare further said he didn’t participate in the elections, and therefore, no one could say he lost.
Speaking on the APC primary, 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,” adding that this was because some defeats were more triumphant than victories.
On if he could serve as a minister under the incoming government, he said he was not desparate.
“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.
