LAGOS: Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Dr. Tunde Bakare has revealed that he is facing mounting pressure from political stakeholders urging him to join the African Democratic Congress (ADC) a move he has firmly declined.
Speaking on Saturday at the maiden edition of the Citadel School of Governance Dialogue Series titled Nigeria at 65: Historical Reflections, Futuristic Projection held in Oregun, Lagos, Bakare said several high-profile political figures, including a former governor and minister from the South-West, have reached out to him to align with the ADC.
There has been a lot of pressure on me from who is 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, Bakare disclosed.
He added that one of his younger associates a beneficiary of appointments under the All-Progressives Congress (APC) also urged him to lend his influence on the ADC.
But Bakare ruled out any possibility of defecting, insisting that doing so would contradict his political convictions. I am not going to take part in ADC. The last time I heard 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,” he said.
The cleric, who played a key role in the formation of the APC, maintained that the emergence of President Bola Tinubu was not a coincidence but an act of divine providence.
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,” Bakare stated.
Also speaking at the event, Professor Akinjide Osuntokun, a former Nigerian Ambassador to Germany, identified corruption and tribalism as the two major challenges holding back the nation’s progress.
He argued that ethnicity should not be a factor in governance if leadership delivers results 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. 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,he noted.
Bakare’s remarks come amid renewed political realignments ahead of the 2027 general elections, with several influential figures seeking to reposition opposition blocs for greater relevance in Nigeria’s evolving political landscape.
