Senior pastor of Citadel Global Community Church in Lagos, Tunde Bakare, haa on Sunday said the state of Nigeria does not reflect President Muhammadu Buhari that he knew when he was his running mate in 2011, noting that his legacy is in grave danger of being confined to an unsavoury side of history.
In his State of the Nation address to commemorate the 2021 Easter celebrations, Bakare said he is forced to speak out owing to what he described as Buhari’s legacy being confined to the unsavoury side of history.
He expressed;
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 speak out at this point because, given the state of the nation, the legacy of President Muhammadu Buhari is in grave danger of being confined to an unsavoury side of history. I am indeed compelled to speak out because Nigeria is in a state of emergency.
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. #SOTNB21
— Pastor Tunde Bakare (@T_Bakare) April 4, 2021
Bakare, who was the running mate of Buhari in 2011 under the platform of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), said he warned in 2015 that Nigeria’s problems are beyond the change of government, stressing that the country’s problems are symptoms of fundamental problems.
He also said Nigeria is in a state of emergency over a series of security challenges ranging from terrorism to banditry, kidnapping to militancy, cultism to human trafficking among several others.
Pastor Bakare recalled that when President Buhari took office in 2015, he promised to tackle corruption, tackle insecurity and fix the nation’s economy.
He stated;
Fellow Nigerians, you may recall that as PMB took the oath of office during his first term in office, he summed up his election campaign promises in 3 pivotal agendas, namely: Security, Anti-Corruption & Eco Diversification with a focus on job creation.
However, the 1st term saw the Buhari admin grapple with the collapse in oil prices and Nigeria’s 1st recession in about 25 yrs. Despite the false starts, the admin succeeded in bringing Nigeria out of recession and made some gains in security, job creation and anti-corruption.
Bakare stressed;
On security, the administration of President Buhari continued the military assault on Boko Haram that had commenced at the end of the term of his predecessor.
We recall the PMB’s 1st bold move when he ordered the relocation of the Command Control Centre from Abuja to Borno. By December 2015, the government declared Boko Haram “technically defeated” and unable to mount conventional attacks against hard or soft targets.
On anti-corruption: PMB took commendable steps in the fight against corruption at the beginning of his admin, including the attempt to plug the loopholes in the system through the Treasury Single Account (TSA) intervention.
He added;
In 2016, Nigeria received its highest scorecard so far in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
On job creation, at the beginning of his administration, President Muhammadu Buhari embarked on large-scale skill development through the N-Power programme. Under this scheme, hundreds of thousands were empowered.
Lamenting the spate of insecurity in the country under the watch of Buhari, however, Bakare said security governance is “superficial” and “inadequate.”
Bakare noted;
Years after the government assured Nigerians that Boko Haram had been technically defeated, we are once again confronted with entire villages being overrun. While I commend the bravery of our armed forces, the worsening security situation is an indication that our approach to security governance is simply superficial and inadequate to deal with the root causes of the problem.
The cleric further urged the Buhari government to consider a national rebirth conference focused on “devolution of policing powers to the subnational governments”, arguing that calls for “restructuring” is not an attack on Nigeria’s unity or a call for Nigeria’s disintegration.
Bakare expressed;
Restructuring means empowering the North West, the North Central, the North East, the South West, the South South and the South East, so that every part of our country will be safe and prosperous. Show me one person who does not want this for our country, and I will show you an enemy of Nigeria.
