Tunde Bakare: "I am Nigeria's next president" - Nigerians React As Pastor Bakare Declares He Would Succeed Buhari As President

Tunde Bakare is a Nigerian Prophetic-Apostolic pastor. He was reportedly arrested in March 2002 after preaching sermons critical of then-president Olusegun Obasanjo. He was the running mate of the Nigerian presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 Nigerian presidential election.

Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly has declared himself the next president and successor of president Buhari.

Bakare made the proclamation during a sermon; 

“Take it to the mountain top if you have never heard it before. I am saying it to you this morning, in the scheme of things, as far as politics of Nigeria is concerned

To this end was I born and for this purpose came I into the world. I have prepared for this for 30 years. When he (Buhari) chose to run in 2019, he is still number 15, when he steps out, I step in.

“His assignment is that of Moses, to take Nigeria to River Jordan, but he can’t cross it. It will take a Joshua to go to the other side and begin to distribute the resources to the people of this nation,” Bakare told his congregation.

Tunde Bakare, 64, claimed that his dream has always been for him to be 16th president of Nigeria someday, regaling his congregation now and again that he is only waiting for God’s appointed time.

Bakare was Buhari’s running mate in the 2011 presidential election on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Buhari polled second, garnering 12, 214,853 votes behind eventual winner and then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. 

Jonathan polled 22,495,187.

Bakare and Buhari have been buddies for a while. However, the pastor never misses the opportunity to criticize a host of President Buhari policies.

In 2018, Bakare said Buhari has failed woefully. He has also dismissed President Buhari’s anti-corruption war as a selective endeavor and his handling of the economy as abysmal.

Bakare has once said; “The allegations by the Nigerian public is that those around the president are also stealing, and some names have been mentioned. You cannot be a clean man surrounded by rogues. If you don’t deal with those rogues, they would colour you with the same tar".

Buhari would have concluded his constitutionally permissible second term in office by May of 2023.

The Nigerian presidency, which is often rotated between a predominantly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north, would most likely be left to the south, where Bakare hails from in 2023.

Permutations, horse-trading and intrigues in this regard have already commenced.