Citadel Global Community Church founder, Pastor Tunde Bakare, says he is under intense pressure from political stakeholders to defect to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) but has ruled out joining the party.
Bakare, speaking on Saturday at the maiden edition of the Citadel School of Governance Dialogue Series in Lagos, disclosed that prominent figures, including a former governor and minister from the South-West, had urged him to align with the ADC.
“There has been a lot of pressure on me from the who’s 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,” he said.
He added that one of his younger political associates who benefited from appointments in the All Progressives Congress also pushed him to support the ADC.
The cleric, however, dismissed the proposal: “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. 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.”
Bakare, a co-founder of the APC, insisted that President Bola Tinubu’s emergence was divinely orchestrated. “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,” he said.
At the same event, former Nigerian Ambassador to Germany, Prof. Akinjide Osuntokun, identified corruption and tribalism as Nigeria’s major problems, arguing that the ethnicity of the president was less important than delivering good governance.
“The two problems our country faces are corruption and tribalism. If there is a way of eradicating these two evils, we will be alright. Corruption is the father or mother of tribalism. If the money being stolen was available for development, Nigeria would be far better,” Osuntokun said.
He added that ethnic considerations in leadership would remain irrelevant if corruption persisted: “The fact that Tinubu is president does not automatically improve the life of an average Yoruba man, just as an Igbo presidency will not improve the life of the ordinary Igbo man if there is no development.”
