Popular cleric-cum-politician, Pastor Tunde Bakare has said he would not address President-elect Bola Tinubu, who is due for inauguration on Monday, May 29, as ‘my president’.
The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (formerly known as Latter Rain Assembly) said this on Saturday during a virtual programme titled ‘Building the New Nigeria: The Role of the Diaspora’ organised by the PTB4Nigeria In Diaspora Group.
Bakare alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) presided over a sub-par 2023 elections.
Asked during the Zoom meeting which had over 200 participants if he would be happy to work for the new government as a Minister of Diaspora Engagements, he laughed and said he would repeat what he told President Muhammadu Buhari last week.
Bakare said he told Buhari that sometimes he called him President of Nigeria and other times, he called him “My President.”
The cleric 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.”
Bakare noted 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.”
The cleric, who picked the APC presidential nomination form but got no single vote in the primaries, said he did not participate in the elections, and therefore no one could say he lost.
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.