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Tag: Bakare

  • Buhari: Nigeria needs young, energetic president – Bakare

    Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly has said Nigeria needs to go back to the days when leaders in their 30s managed the affairs of the nation.

    The former vice-presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change, who spoke during a press conference after his Sunday morning sermon titled, ‘The birth pangs of a new Nigeria,’ noted that France’s recent election of 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron as president was indicative of a global paradigm shift.

    Bakare said, “If you want to know whether the President (Muhammadu Buhari) is getting better (and) recovering, I said in the course of that message – he’s on the sure path to recovery. Give him time. Niger Republic has not seen their president for a while.

    “Nigeria needs an energetic leader but the circumstances of our polity have brought us to where we are that the same country that the likes of (Yakubu) Godwin ruled at the age of 30 is now considering people in their 60s and 70s to administer it.

    “What happened in France recently is a clear sign that there is going to be a change of guards almost worldwide. But let’s accept our own thing and resolve our issues with wisdom.

    “(Between) the man in the intensive care unit and the doctor treating him or wishing him dead, you don’t know who will die first. If God sent Isaiah back to go and tell Hezekiah that He was adding 15 years to his life, He is the only one who can do what He wills to do. Nobody should wish another person dead. We should just pray, because you would put Nigeria in disaster.”

    According to the pastor, who ran alongside Buhari for the presidency in 2011, whenever leaders served with diminishing energy, a leadership vacuum would be created.

    He noted that nature abhorred vacuums and that leadership vacuums often allowed the likes of Adonijah and Absalom in the Bible to have a field day.

    Bakare said, “If the President is very healthy and able to discharge his duties, there would be no room for Absaloms and Adonijahs. Absalom was the firstborn whose inordinate ambition had no respect for his father, his benefactor, and was willing to consume him and drag him out of power.

    “Those who don’t learn (from) the blunder of history will repeat the blunder of history until they become history. Adonijah did not learn from what happened to Absalom and he came to a wrong conclusion because his scenario postulation was wrong. He assumed that ‘if the king is this old and weak, the next in line is automatically the next king’.”

    The clergyman added that though the constitution was ‘full of flaws’, it provided that in the event that the President could not discharge his duties, he must transmit power to the Vice-President to become acting President.

    “(Buhari) had never left without transmitting that power. So, there’s no trouble (this time round),” he noted.

    The vocal pastor however warned military officers to defend and remain loyal to the country’s nascent democracy.

  • Churches, clerics opposing FRCN Act are ‘pentecostal charismatic rascals’ – Bakare

     

    The founder of the Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare has lashed out at fellow clerics who protested the implementation of the recently suspended Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria Act 2011.

    The Serving Overseer of The Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has condemned religious leaders in the nation who are against the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria Act 2011.

    Bakare in his usual vocal attitude to national issues, expressed his displeasure at the handling of the FRCN Act by clerics especially of the pentecostal denomination.

    The fiery cleric was speaking during a monitored church service in his church on Sunday.

    He said by opposing the law, church leaders were trying to prevent the public from knowing about acts of money laundering that they had indulge in by virtue of their positions.

    Recall that Pastor Enoch Adeboye had earlier resigned as the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God citing the Act as his reason.

    Adeboye’s resignation was not taken lightly by the christian faithfuls and the inttensified outcry lead to the sacking of the FRCN Secretary, John Obazee and the subsequent suspension of the Act by the presidency

    In Bakare’s words: “I can testify that the law was explained to kingpins in the church, but now you want to get away because you want to cover your iniquity. You won’t get away with it.

    “You want to get away because you have laundered money, and you are now trying to cover your yansh”.

    Bakare, who is also the Convener of the Save Nigeria Group, praised the law, saying it was good for order and accountability in the church.

    “I am a trained lawyer, I have read the law. The law specifically mentioned Chief Imams and pastors, that they can have lifelong terms. But it says you cannot be chief priest, chief treasurer, and chief administrator.”

    He described church leaders who oppose the law as “pentecostal charismatic rascals” who want to do whatever they like even if the law says otherwise.

    “You don’t want to comply with the law, then why did you register under the law? It is a spirit of lawlessness and the anti-Christ because the anti-Christ is a lawless spirit.”

    Bakare noted that he was being patient and was waiting for the right time to speak officially on the matter, saying “the fact that I am quiet doesn’t mean I am stupid. I don’t fight useless battles”.

    He urged fellow clerics to see the Act as a way of enforcing good leadership and accountability in the church instead of the perceived persecution of the church and Christians by the incumbent administration.