The founder of Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has declared that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s emergence as Nigeria’s leader was not by accident but by divine arrangement, stressing that only God can determine when his tenure ends.
Speaking at the inaugural Citadel School of Governance Dialogue Series in Lagos on Saturday, Bakare said Tinubu’s rise was divinely orchestrated and not the work of man.
“If God wants to remove ‘Emilokan,’ He knows how to do it. You can’t get the kind of thing Tinubu has brought without God’s support,” the fiery cleric stated, invoking the president’s famous campaign slogan.
He maintained that Tinubu’s power and achievements were possible only through the hand of God.
“You can’t deny that his rise and what he has achieved came through the hand of God,” Bakare said.
Turning to his own political journey, the preacher revealed he had come under intense pressure from senior politicians and young associates to join the African Democratic Congress (ADC), but he has resisted every push.
“There has been a lot of pressure on me from who is who to join ADC. They come to my home. Even while I was abroad, the hierarchy of that party kept calling, saying they needed my voice,” Bakare said.
He disclosed that even allies who once benefitted from APC appointments urged him to cross over, but he refused.
“I am not going to take part in ADC. The last time I knew about ADC was about a plane that crashed. I wish them well, because we need a robust opposition,” he said.
The former APC presidential aspirant and one-time Buhari running mate said his loyalty to the ruling party remains unshaken.
“But you don’t birth a child called APC and then try to kill it yourself. We are not going to have another Awolowo–Akintola crisis in the South-West,” he warned.
Bakare, who contested the APC presidential primary against Tinubu in 2023, reminded his audience that he was Buhari’s running mate in the 2011 election under the defunct CPC, one of the parties that merged to form the APC.
