The presiding Pastor and General Overseer of the Citadel Global Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has stated the legacy of President Muhammadu Buhari is in grave danger of being confined to an unsavoury side of history.
Bakare stressed he is being compelled to speak out given the state of the nation, arguing Nigeria is in a state of emergency.
In a statement entitled: “The Conspicuous Handwriting on the Wall,” Bakare recalled how he was invited by the then General Muhammadu Buhari to run with him on the platform of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 presidential election.
He said: “After initial hesitation, my eventual acceptance was upon the assurance that, amongst other deliverables, our administration would commit to re-engineering Nigeria’s governmental structure with a view to guaranteeing the security & prosperity of our nation & her people.
“After a vigorous campaign, GMB gave a deeply emotional public statement at a press conference on April 13, 2011 – “I am in this solely for the love of my country and concern for its destiny and the fate of its people.”
Bakare explained how some individuals prevailed on Buhari not to quit the stage after the 2011 elections.
“Some of us prevailed on General Muhammadu Buhari not to quit the stage but to take back his words and form a coalition of the best of the North and the best of the South to salvage our nation.
” I must admit that I played a critical role in that mission. God had shown me in a vision that GMB still had a role to play in stabilising Nigeria.
“I, therefore, facilitated a meeting in the United Kingdom between him and some of our CPC leaders with a view to forming a coalition between CPC and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that could save Nigeria from impending disaster,” he said.
Bakare recalled how he warned a mere change of government without the definite resolution of these foundational questions of nationhood would amount to putting the cart before the horse and could lead the nation to a catastrophe.
“As I told the President in some of those engagements, his success is my success, and his failure is my failure. It is why I remain committed to seeing him succeed.
“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 cry out because of the intent of the president as contained in his tribute dated October 14, 2019 in honour of my 65th birthday PMB wrote to me: “We have shared ideas on how to engender a better country and formed a tag team for political power. May the ideas germinate fully, proliferate and give us the country of our dreams.
“The purpose of this address is to present the facts of this diagnosis and point a way out of our current crisis even as we approach a critical juncture in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.”
Speaking on the rising insecurity, he said: “Not even the President’s controversial shoot-on-sight order for illegal bearers of AK-47 guns has proved sufficient to abate these attacks.”
He noted Nigeria has two fundamental problems: one at the level of nationhood, and the other at the level of statehood.

By Alao Abiodun