Tunde Bakare, pastor of the Citadel Global Community Church, has lamented Nigeria’s woeful governance, describing same as “gross failure.”
He also said that Nigeria was drifting to precipice and urged urgent action to avert the doom.
The cleric also said there was nothing wrong in a Northerner succeeding incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari In 2023, adding that competence rather than zoning should decide who rules the country.
Bakare stated this in an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday, noting that zoning was unconstitutional.
There have been increased agitations from Southern leaders that the presidency should be zoned to the region in 2023 when the tenure of President Buhari expires. Leaders in the Southeast say they would not vote for any political party that refuses to present presidential candidate from the region.
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According to him, “Let the best of the best emerge… it doesn’t matter which part of the country the person comes from. I have heard all kinds of arguments on rotation and zoning.
“Some are saying Obasanjo, plus Goodluck Jonathan, that’s 14 years and Umaru Yar’Adua plus Buhari is 10 years and that the North still has four more years. At this moment, what is needed is a person who can do it”, he said.
The former vice-presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 general election bemoaned the state of nation, saying it was not the Nigeria he had envisioned.
Bakare said that Nigeria was at the precipice and that many things currently happening in the country have not been seen before, stressing however, that Nigeria has a way of bouncing back.
“This is not the Nigeria we envisioned not only as young people but in recent past. It is as if we are again at the precipice but Nigeria has a way of bouncing back; we are full of hope that God Almighty will help us. We are in a very perplexing situation as a nation.
“Many things that we didn’t see before are happening now. Even the president himself said so that nothing worries or bothers him like what is happening in the Northeast, especially the banditry and kidnapping,” Bakare added.
When asked if Buhari’s administration is a failure, Bakare said there is “gross failure” in the administration.
According to him, “I like to use my own words. Failure will look, ‘like try again’, you can still do something with it. I once failed an examination in mathematics.
“In 1973, I sat for exam and I got what we called inverted six, which is nine in mathematics but I met a friend of mine, who is late now, Ahmed Abebefe, who was a genius in mathematics in secondary school but his English was terrible. I was very good in English. Yes, there is gross failure, it is apparent to everyone but you can fail forward”.
