Controversial Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has said that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has no integrity and incorruptibility like the outgoing, Muhammadu Buhari.
He also said the election that brought in Tinubu was flawed and he would never call him ‘My President’.
Bakare, who contested in the All Progressives Congress presidential primary but scored zero – with Tinubu winning – said this 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’ organised by the PTB4Nigeria In Diaspora Group.
He said he told Buhari that sometimes he called him President of Nigeria and other times, he called him “My President.”
When asked if he would be happy to work for the new government as a Minister of Diaspora Engagements, he laughed and said he would say what he said to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), last week.
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.”
He said he didn’t participate in the elections, and therefore, no one could say he lost.
Bakare, who participated in the All Progressives Congress presidential primary in June 2022, where nomination forms were sold for N100 million, polled no single vote.
Briefly touching this, he 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 within seven minutes.”
“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, adding that this was because some defeats that were more triumphant than victories.
Answering the question, he said if he was 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.
Tinubu will on Monday, May 29, be sworn in as the President of the country.
On Thursday, Tinubu was handed the transition report by Buhari, where he also promised not to disappoint Nigerians.
He pledged to address the security and power crises, among other challenges confronting the country.