PASTOR Tunde Bakare of the Citadel Global Community Church recently sounded what seemed like the death knell for his relationship with the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Mohammadu Buhari. It didn’t come as a shocker to many Nigerians who believe in the philosophy that a ‘fight’ it is that will always bring illicit love relationships to an end. Until Pastor Bakare vented his spleen last Sunday, not many knew how deep and romantic their political love life was, and how much of an abusive relationship it was.
It is obvious that from the way the reverend gentleman spoke, someone had been enduring the relationship and had been trying to make it work. The angry, public divorce announcement as that made by Bakare was like reading the result of years of endurance and a cry against sustained injustice. Bakare finally found his voice. He used the clout which he had laboured to build and diligently nurtured over the years from the days preceding his defunct Latter Rain Assembly, to make his decision known. He even dared his former suitors to touch him as they are wont to, a large poster showing that his former suitors are vindictive and could be vile.
Abusive relationships can be painful. They are a searing internal injury, like an ulcer. They slither menacingly inside, causing indescribable discomfort sometimes seen only in the face of the victim or heard of only through their queer whimpers. When one is in such relationships their effects only smoulder unseen, stealthily razing joy, happiness, peace and love. By my summation, Pastor Tunde Bakare was in such relationship.
But is it Buhari? Is it really Buhari? Buhari had told us that he was not aware of some of the things and issues we rile about. If it is not him, then it must be something. Could it be the people around him, the team we commonly refer to as ‘the cabal’? Bakare did not say it wasn’t Buhari. He didn’t say it was a cabal. We presume that he knows. Or, let’s say we know that he knows. We also assume to know because of some previous symbolic messages that were passed by some other significant members of the team that enthroned the now vilified Buhari government.
One of the earliest ones was Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, the perpetual Lagos Central senator. She raised her voice against some steps by the Buhari regime in February 2018. She said she was hurt by what they did to her husband after the campaigns. He said her husband, Bola Tinubu, was “trashed” but that the man did not say anything. “I was hurt, you know, what they did to my husband after the campaign. Occasionally I’ll chip in and say ‘you’re still helping out? Why are you helping out?” She was quoted to have said at a Television Continental programme. Remi Tinubu might be like Tunde Bakare, they can’t keep it bottled in for too long. But for Bola Tinubu, the broth in the stomach of the old does not waver. He has to stomach everything, including taking trip to the Gambia months before the end game for the 2019 presidential election.
Then there were the lamentations of Aisha Buhari. Yes, the Aisha Buhari, our dear outspoken First Lady. Where has she even been…? We remember that she also spoke loudly against the turn of events with her husband’s administration. She said so much as to disclose that those who did not sow with her husband were the ones reaping the fruits of the Buhari administration. She was hushed. She was told to keep quiet and go to the kitchen where her husband said she belonged. When she insisted, like Fela Anikulapo Kuti aptly sang in 1971 in “Don’t Gag Me” “O le pe nu mi de…” She insisted that she must express herself. Well, she paid for that. She returned from a trip one day and she was locked out. The feudal lords had to show our president’s wife who’s the boss.
Bakare has started the Nigeria for Nigeria. He’s saying we should not carry on with the current Nigeria for Fulani. Bakare expressed our collective disgust at the appalling situation of things in the various sectors of the country’s economy. He has become the metaphor, a fresh voice against insecurity, poor handling of the economy, decaying infrastructure, worsening food crisis, galloping inflation and above all, the arrogance of not accepting that all is not well. Rather than accept that we need help, the man Bakare has turned against has herded the various divides and interest in the country into what they treat as one ugly loop of captured slaves.
It should worry the Buhari government that its adversaries are growing. But they don’t care because the movers of the government have the slave-master mentality. It is enough to assume that if Buhari had won in 2011, Tunde Bakare might have ended up the worse because his shining brilliance might have been blurred by the cloud of his former friends’ deadly, unaccommodating clan politics. We can see the fate of Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN).
In April, Pastor Bakare lamented that this isn’t the Nigeria he envisioned in 2011. That was when he ran on the same ticket with Buhari as candidates of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). He went into that race with a mindset, and I’m sure he would have seen by now that he was running alone and would have been isolated too if they had won that election. His co-candidate obviously had his or their own agenda.
Now that he has joined the swelling rank of former Buhari supporters, will his “Nigeria for Nigeria” movement be on the same pedestal with his “Save Nigeria Group” of 2010? The capacity of Save Nigeria Group was enhanced by myriad of factors which we can see are not there at the moment. The media he and others used to propel the former group have been severely threatened and frightened. That is one aspect of his former friend that he would learn anew, and that is one area that would also test his resolve to tackle the establishment.
He said Nigeria for Nigeria” will thrive and be greater than the Save Nigeria Group he convened in 2010? Another cleric has described the new group as “selfish” and that it would “put Nigerians in further bandage.” Bakare has backed out of the relationship. Where will he get to?
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