The cleric had warned Nigerians to avoid those endorsing “emilokan,” a term connected to Tinubu that in Yoruba means “my turn.”
According to the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), Pastor Tunde Bakare, a party chieftain, is a “inconsistent, unstable person.”
At the party’s Special Presidential Convention last year, Bakare, the Presiding Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (formerly Latter Rain Assembly), engaged in combat with Bola Tinubu.
The cleric urged Nigerians to avoid those endorsing “emilokan,” a term connected to Tinubu and meaning “my turn” in Yoruba, in his state-of-the-nation address on Sunday.
A good politician who wants to win the public’s support wouldn’t avoid public debates, he continued, and he has given his team members the responsibility of responding to questions that are specifically targeted at him.
Responding in a statement on Thursday, Biodun Ajiboye, the Assistant Director of Publicity of the APC-PCC said the cleric did not have political value.
The statement read, “There is no doubt about the fact that Pastor Tunde Bakare has been a successful clergyman but his foray into politics is a little bit confusing even to himself, for him to begin to assume that he’s a politician is a complete mistake. That President Buhari chose him as a running mate sometimes back is not enough to arrogate himself a position of Aristotle and begin to pontificate and predict political permutations.
“He’s as ordinary as the man on the street without any political clout. A man who got zero votes at his party primaries simply means he has zero personality, zero popularity, and zero leadership. He should simply go and rest and allow politicians to be on the field.
“This is the same man who deceitfully told the world as if God spoke to him that he was going to be the next President after Buhari, then went into the primaries of the party he belonged to and nobody could vote for him. Since the primaries, he’s been relatively forgotten in the political space and so he’s come out now to start analyzing politics as if he’s a societal barometer for good character.
“What scares Nigerians the most is his inter-lopping attitude thinking that if he speaks the world will tremble, the world no longer revolves around him and he must understand that. He then goes on to brag about certificates at a time when we’re talking about political popularity and relevance.
“I think he should be quiet and allow God to speak to him, if God has stopped speaking to him, then he needs to stop speaking to Nigerians and misleading people. We (APC) are concerned about how to marshal democracy and the next elections peacefully, let Pastor Bakare not throw any clog in the wheel of anybody’s progress.
“His onslaught stands condemnable and I condemn it in the strongest terms, he needs to stop meddling with the political process and understand that he can’t fool God with big grammar. Why should our society allow a clergyman of multi-dimensional polarization to guide our behavior as a society? At some point he spoke so well about Asiwaju, at another point he will speak against Asiwaju.
“At some point, he spoke so well about President Buhari, when he’s seeing that Buhari is not doing his bidding, he speaks against Buhari. The man is such an inconsistently unstable person, let him just face his business as a clergyman that he’s called to do rather than meddle in politics.”
