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From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential aspirant and Serving Overseer, the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has said that if given the presidential ticket of the APC, he will trounce former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential election.
Bakare who exuded confidence while speaking in an exclusive interview with Sunday Sun in Abuja, said: “Why do you think he has all it takes to win without any serious fight? Why do you think Atiku has all the things? I don’t want you to underestimate the day Goliath faced David.”
Bakare who was the vice presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 general elections, assured Nigerians that he will take the country out of the woods if given the opportunity to govern the country.
Nigerians are on another journey to elect their leaders into various offices and you have expressed interest to vie for the presidency. What is the driving force behind your vision to govern Nigeria?
The driving force is to ensure that we have a nation that is no longer talking about the potential of this nation. In simple physics, there is potential energy and there is kinetic energy. We want to maximise the potentials and make it a great nation once again. It was great before. Other nations are looking. Our country was at independence. We were a great and successful nation that we would be and we were partakers. What happened in the early 60s when I was in primary school, you looked at Nigeria as a great nation. But today, we are backslided. The driving force is to ensure that we attain our position and that God has ordained this country to be in the comity of nations and to make Nigeria to become a nation for every Nigerian.
Like other aspirants, we haven’t been seeing you going out to canvass support. Is it because you are the anointed one?
Everyone is anointed. Even the Satan is anointed too. We are not making pretences of being the anointed one. No! I am a lawyer by training. There is the Electoral Act. The majority of the journey made by others were to go and see statutory delegates and they are not going to be relevant in this election. So, we have been making our contact with those who will vote and that exercise, the congresses were not concluded until last weekend. All the jamborees going around were to meet statutory delegates. Now that we know the delegates, we are reaching out to them.
Your party, APC, promised to halt insecurity, curb corruption and improve the economy. Several times, you joined other Nigerians in lamenting the state of the nation. Would you say the APC failed Nigerians? And if so, what is responsible for the failure?
It is so quick to be critical than to be correct. Anyone can say APC has failed as if they were just drinking tea, drinking coffee and having champagne party. They were working day and night. These are overwhelming situations and challenges. Nobody envisioned COVID-19 when it came. We have come out of recession twice already and it took deliberate efforts and political will to drive that change so that they came out of our economic doldrums. Security – the challenge did not begin with the APC. It has been here. It has grown worse worldwide. I am sure if you were there, you won’t call what happened in America recently a terrorist attack when a student took gun and shot other students in the classroom. The world is bewildered by the things that are happening. The government did its best. We need to do more to ensure that we curtail these things. And given the opportunity, we continue to build on what has been done by ensuring that we have a different security architecture that will be able to curtail what is happening and improve the security situation in our country.
But looking at the state of the nation, do you think Nigerians can trust your party again with their votes?
They trusted PDP for 16 years before we drove them out. We have only done seven, going to eight. It depends on who we present. It depends on the candidates that will emerge. It is not just the party, but the candidate that will emerge. You see, we can sit back here and lambast a government. We did that with PDP and we are doing it with APC. Are there propositions coming from the fourth realm of the estate, the media, that let’s do it this way? Are we just attacking, opposing or are we making proposition on how this could be done? We are bringing fresh ideas that will curtail the things that we are seeing and until that time, we should be given another chance. I don’t want to go back to what one of the governors’ father said in the past that if a person repeats a class, as long as he is going to succeed at the end of the day… APC has done its best. It does not seem to have covered… I still see the pain of Nigerians; I see the anguish, but Rome was not built in a day. Let’s take it from where it is today; let’s celebrate the successes we have accomplished and let us begin to build on those successes and get a better nation for ourselves.
Your position and positivity of succeeding President Muhammadu Buhari: Are you still the 16th president of Nigeria?
By the grace of God! I intend to be. If I do not want to be, I will not buy the form.
hat do you suspect your party will do before its national convention?
I don’t deal in suspicion, I deal in discernment.
How about the party’s style of consensus and demand by President Muhammadu Buhari for him to be allowed to choose his successor?
Well, there are three ways a flag bearer can emerge according to the Electoral Act. It is by direct primary which has been dropped right now because no party seems to be doing that; then indirect primary by bringing the delegates to choose the flag bearer from different geopolitical zones and states and then, consensus. Any of those three is legal and any can be adopted by any party. And some other parties have adopted different methods of raising their flag bearer. So, whatever APC does is within the law, it’s acceptable.
But why is it difficult for the Southwest bloc to have a consensus, particularly you, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Governor Kayode Fayemi, Senator Ibukunle Amosun and others?
Why do you think that discussions are not going on? You don’t put everything you are doing in the open space. Discussions are going on. You never can tell what will happen before that day.
What will you do if you fail to get the APC ticket?
The supremacy of the party is paramount. The party and the delegates decide who will be the candidate. The president would have has his own say, but the party ultimately, will determine who gets it. Only one person will get it out of 22 contestants. So, if it is my lot and blessing to get it, so be it. If I don’t get it, it is not life and death.
And if you get it, are you confident that you will be able to defeat former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the PDP?
Why do you think he has all it takes to win without any serious fight? Why do you think Atiku has all the things? I don’t want you to underestimate the day Goliath faced David. Goliath thought he was a man of war from youth and who is this fellow. Go and read your story, you will find what happened on that day. Atiku Abubakar, the Turakin of Adamawa, is a formidable politician, but belongs to PDP. Have you forgotten quickly what PDP did to us, to this nation, 16 years? We are yet to come out of the woods from what they did. And we are now coming little out of the woods, you are asking us to drive back and put the vehicle in reverse gear again? No, no, no! And I want to say something to you – don’t underestimate my capacity.
What are your chances of getting the APC presidential ticket?
Brilliant!
How brilliant?
We are 22 who had been screened, we will know the result of the screening and when it finishes, we will know. I know definitely Nigerians will be shocked when I emerge, but it will bring joy across the cities of the nation because we have what to offer this nation. Don’t forget also that by God’s grace; you can write a whole life on the sky, there will be no blemish. Character defect will crush anybody’s confidence. We are bringing both to bear and to challenge every citizen of our country that we can rebuild our nation from its ruins presently.
If you get the ticket, how do you plan to fix Nigeria?
I have demonstrated and I can give you the manifesto of ‘A New Nigeria for Every Nigerian.’ There are four pillars that we are letting the whole world know. One, we start with peace. Look at our nation in disarray. There is sound of war everywhere – there is I want to go, I want to be part of this, I am IPOB and this and that. The first pillar is peace. Without peace, there cannot be increase. The next pillar is progress; after that is prosperity and after that, you have possibilities. Each one with timelines and everything had been spelt out in what we call our Declaration Speech and we have developed that. If you have been following The Cable, they sent 12 questions to every presidential candidate to say what they will do and we sat down to craft, not just deceptively, but with facts and figures, to craft out what we will do. Within 100 days of stepping into power, you will know that a new season has come upon this nation.
So, you are prepared to take the country out of the woods?
Completely! Completely! We have been on this journey for about 30 years of studying and going everywhere in the world to assemble the best and the brightest and from the Diaspora to those who are within the country; you will see the brightest and the fittest running the affairs of our nation across party lines, across religious lines and across ethnic lines. The truth of the matter is, we are going to have a cutting edge nation for the first time in a long time.
