Bakare warns ‘power mongers’ on Buhari’s health

The running-mate of President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 presidential elections and General Overseer, Latter Rain Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare has warned those planning to take advantage of the state of health of the president to plunge the country into unwarranted crisis, to desist or be ready to face the wrath of God.

The cleric, while speaking in Lagos yesterday on the state of the nation in a message titled: ‘The Birth Pangs of a New Nigeria,’ also warned against military incursion into politics, saying, “Although, I have vowed to stop agitations but if for whatever reason the military tried to return to power, I will mobilize people across the length and breadth of the country to resist them. Look at what the military did to Nigeria, how it bastardised it? There is no way we can tolerate military incursion into politics again.”

According to him, “What the country is going through in not new nor strange. Our nation is going through birth pangs but there is all assurance it would survive. Where the leader of a nation is sick or incapacitated for whatever reason, there is bound to be a leadership vacuum, which some people may like to take advantage of, but the present situation of President Buhari is different entirely from what we witnessed during the time of late President Umaru Yar’Adua.”

Bakare noted that “Buhari transmitted power appropriately through the provision of the Constitution to his vice as Acting President, which was not the case during Yar’Adua and that was the reason I led the Save Nigeria Group to protest then. In this situation, there is no need for anybody, either the military or desperate and ambitious politicians, to start testing the ground through the echo of coup plot or other surreptitious means because the president is still alive and he is on a recovery path.”

He noted there were Absalom and Adonijah, who thought they could capitalise on the state of health of King David to become king but at the end of the day “they became history. They became history because they failed to learn from history.”

According to him, “The president may be ill, he may be cold but he is not yet dead. All the actors in the corridors of power may keep acting but the residual powers still lies with the president.”

He therefore sounded a note of warning to desperate politicians, whose activities may plunge the nation into unnecessary crisis and also testing the waters of coups to be careful “military rule is no longer fashionable across the world. The world has move beyond military rule. “

Bakare also warned those drumming the beats of war to desist, saying, “Any war would not favour anybody, any group or ethnic group in the country. This is another sign of leadership vacuum and we need to guard against it.”

According to him, “All those postulating on what to do peradventure Buhari dies or becomes incapacitated forgot that God has the final say over the health and life of every human being, Mr. President inclusive. It is in their interest to stop because it is only the counsel of God that will stand.”

While leading his congregations to pray for the speedy recovery of President Buhari, he also charged all Christians and Muslims not to cease from praying for his good health and that they should also stop to listen to the tales of politicians.”

Reacting on the recent demand of the Senate to the Presidency, for the reports of the 2014 national Conference, the cleric said, “It was a good step but I wondered if the Senate is not playing to the gallery. In the first instance, the report was submitted to the National Assembly, which didn’t do anything. But if it deemed it right to act on it now, my take is everything that this country needed to be reformed and reorganize are embedded in the 2014 Conference recommendations.”