Tunde Bakare: Tinubu Lacks Buhari’s Integrity, I Will Never Call Him ‘My President’

The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has stated that President-elect Bola Tinubu lacks the integrity and incorruptibility of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Speaking during a webinar on Saturday, the cleric and politician said he would never call Tinubu his president.

While responding during a Question & Answer session after delivering his speech on the Zoom programme titled ‘Building the New Nigeria: The Role of the Diaspora,’ Bakare said the Independent National Electoral Commission made a mess of the electioneering process, stressing that the 2023 elections were below acceptable standards.

On if he would be happy to work for the new government as a Minister of Diaspora Engagements, Pastor Bakare said he would say what he said to President Buhari last week.

He said he told Buhari that sometimes he called him President of Nigeria, and other times, he called him “My President.”

Bakare 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, who polled zero votes in the All Progressives Congress presidential primary in June 2022, 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 if he were called to be a minister under the incoming government, there would be conditions to it, “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.”