Tunde Bakare, the senior pastor of the Citadel Global Community Church, has hit back at the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu, saying he has true identity and credentials.
The popular cleric stated this in response to Tinubu’s media’s team criticism over his recent message to Nigerians to reject any presidential candidate who sees the presidency as his entailment and evade debates.
Tinubu’s media team had described Bakare as a paperweight politician who got zero votes in the APC primary last year.
But in a further reply on Tuesday, Bakare said he was proud of the zero votes he got in the party’s presidential primary with his integrity intact.
“Can someone tell these people that scoring zero in a primary election with one’s true identity and integrity intact as well as having original credentials from well-known schools:
“Primary, Secondary, colleges and Universities within and outside of this nation is a veritable badge of honour, absolutely legit and unquestionable? Please tell them that in the words of Michel De Montaigne, “Bakare said
He wondered why the media team decided to respond to a man they tagged a paperweight politician.
He further denied endorsing or telling his church members who among the presidential candidates to vote for in the 2023 presidential poll, noting that it was up to them to decide.
According to Bakare, “Why are they then giving any thought to what I said? Maybe their alleged “paperweight” is too heavy for them to carry.
“There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.” One of the Special Advisers that I thought had some semblance of nobility had to utter outright lies and falsehoods to satisfy his paymaster. He said that I did a video asking members of our church to vote for their candidate and then turned around to ask them not to vote for him.
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“Unfortunately, there is no such video containing such falsehood. The abridged video these people are sending around is from a message preached here (Citadel Global Community Church) in 2020 with the title: “An idle man’s brain is the devil’s workshop.” I made it clear in the video that I did not endorse their candidate’s lifestyle, business or type of politics.
“In the said video, I never asked our members to vote or not vote for their candidate or any other candidate. By the way, our members are not zombies. They, by the grace of God, have their own minds and will decide who to vote for on Election Day.
“As for those whose stock in trade is lying against others and fabricating stories that are not true about them, our strong consolation is that their DNA and the final destination are spelt out in the Bible. See Psalm 58:3-8. “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies…”
“Rest assured I will take the vicious attacks of these political merchants in my stride, because I know that according to Voltaire: “Many are destined to reason wrongly, others not to reason at all and some to persecute those who do reason.”
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