Pastor Bakare: Babylon, Damascus or Golgotha?

MY verdict; Latter rain man, Pastor Tunde Bakare, is using worldly wisdom to work out a reported divine project, it won’t work. I will explain.

As president, Bakare will be something in-between Donald Trump’s profitable and result-oriented eccentricity and Barack Obama’s illusionary embodiment of the utopia. If we are to do a Nigeria weigh-in, he will be something between his older kinsman, Olusegun Obasanjo and his older friend, incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari. Obasanjo is Nigeria’s Trump minus the pigment differentiation and cash-before-office. Buhari is the squeezed, rumpled and variegated clone of the one who helped him into office. Despite the perforation everywhere, Barack, even out of power, still flaunts that jaded cloak of invisibility from a flea-ridden “golden fleece.” That should make Pastor Bakare a passable leader, who should be better than what we have now and the one before it. Since, he is also expected to remain unblemished and without Aremu’s amoral and amorous baggage as a genuine child of God, he will be expected to have better focus than his older brother and could end up being the best of the lot since 1999. All, above, are mere hypotheses.

Political calculi do not favour a Bakare presidency in 2023 even if the rest of Nigeria conceded the seat to Yoruba, in repeat of 1999 though such hope is now a long shot. Nothing also says God in His sovereignty cannot program him into the office, if He had truly chosen him for the assignment and his season is now. If a Bakare presidency is destined for 2023, the God who Daniel Chapter 2:21 says, controls times and season, would overrule all opposition, complete with an unfavourable power of incumbency and perceivably impregnable political fortresses in Lagos and elsewhere.

However, a little digression should be apt here, though the impact may be nil or minimal on and for those the three-cardinal tragedies should be speaking to. Without doubt, despite public disavowal of its timeliness, 2023 shenanigans are already loading around the country and it is clear as daylight that our politics and electioneering is now marooned in “the axis of evil”, right behind devil’s backyard. But God hasn’t stopped speaking too, telling men they have to be alive first, to fight for positions. Within 48 hours, three poignant deaths from North, South-West and East, came in torrent. First, it was chairman-designate for Ipokia LG in Ogun on Tuesday, hours to his swearing in. By evening of same day, a tennis-loving party vice-chairman from Kogi, was also snatched, only to be followed on Thursday by the chairman of Arochukwu in Abia State. I deliberately left their names out. They all died, suddenly.

It won’t be a fair categorization, lumping Bakare with the Nigerian clergy. Aside casting self as an outlier, he is almost a loner in the Christendom, having his friends and comfort in politics. Assessing him on the merit of his person, won’t also be an easy task, because once he’s done talking, either of divinity, humanity, existentialism or governance/politics, he retreats into his cubicle, much to the disappointment of those who expected he would not drain himself of the #SaveNigeria blood of 2011, or Anyone-but-Jonathan (ABJ) energy of 2015. So, his words and sayings are the cadaver suitable for post-mortem of his many controversial outings and I must quick to add that it is a deficit to his shepherd calling that the only message from him Nigerians want to listen to, and robustly consider, is the political talk, particularly the pungent flickering. What happens to the ministry of “Go Ye” and the “Good News”?. It isn’t boding well that the man of God isn’t so much respected for the messages of the Holy Spirit to the heathen, as he is, for the sling and stones to his perceived presidential challengers in 2023.

Maybe the stone-casting is to see him in the mould of David, the slayer of Goliath, who succeeded an unsupportive King Saul who wanted him dead and went on, to become one of the greatest rulers and prophets, ever. Why not? It will be a good image for the fire-eating man of God, only that the wisdom of David, is clearly missing in his rulership bid. From the moment David was “anointed” King by Samuel, the Spirit of God took control, and he allowed the One who anointed him, to see him through the succession journey. His proximity to King Saul was arranged by God for him to learn the way of royalty but that didn’t turn him to a boot-licker, encouraging the king to play the Omniscient and Omnipotent at the same time, by choosing a successor all by himself, so Saul could be swayed to love and enthrone him. David left all for the faithful God who began a good thing.

Was Bakare encouraging Buhari to abuse the electoral process beyond the 2019 misery, notched up in Bayelsa and taken to stratosphere in Kogi? Ok, a little digression again. What about this Bayelsa governor-elect David Lyon, seen on record, celebrating an award for the best governor in 2019 when he is yet to be sworn-in? Hehe, nkan nbe ni Bayelsa, nkan nbo ni Yenagoa.

When you see a man always wanting to play to the gallery because of staccato of applause from a far corner of the aisle, he will always get the shine-shine the presidency take Bakare do, by publicly renouncing his closed-fist gift.

If the man of God wasn’t operating again in the flesh like he did in 2011 when he yoked where he confessed God didn’t send him, how on earth could he take the president serious on his mouthed commitment to a free space in 2023 for Nigerians to elect his successor, provided charlatanism won’t resuscitate the tenure elongation tragedy in the National Assembly, particularly in the senate?. What manner of friendship could be so blinding, for Pastor Bakare to, through his so-called national interest intervention, try and re-rob the president, who saw an opportunity in Bakare’s undisguised opportunism, to play the elder-statesman’s card, by repudiating what has come to define his attitude to the political space?, Even if the Latter Rain man was trying to feather his own nest as being generally suspected with the unpatriotic egging of the president, why so brazen? It possibly means only one thing, the project in his hand is either home-made or Tokunbo but definitely not heavenly. I judge ye not, oh man of God. I just look at the fruits coming from your fig tree and try to match them up with my very limited knowledge of the divine and I conclude it would be very tragic if a grievous mistake is repeated.