The presiding overseer of the Global Community Citadel Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has come down hard accusing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of tyranny just as he lamented the myriads of challenges facing Nigeria.
In his broadcast on Sunday to the nation, the clergy condemned the spate of killings in Edo, Benue, Plateau, Zamfara, Borno and other states.
According to him, the Federal Government has failed to guarantee security, adding that this has pushed communities to be forming “poorly trained, poorly equipped and unprofessional militias, with some taking the law into their own hands.
Bakare who was running mate to Muhammadu Buhari during the 2011 presidential election, was among the aspirants of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who lost the party’s presidential primaries to Tinubu in 2022.
He said the security situation in the country was a dangerous trajectory and demanded for a holistic reform of the national security architecture.
Bakare attributed the national security challenges to fundamental structural defect designed by the constitution, saying the country must undertake a security philosophy to one that protects Nigerians from one that protects government officials.
He called for a reinstatement of national security federalism through a constitution that allows multilevel policing, including local, state and zonal policing systems.
“Against this backdrop, we must redesign our security architecture by facilitating the formation of zonal security councils chaired by a governor from the respective zone on a rotating basis. Such zonal security councils, which will be formed by state and local policing systems within respective zones, must be managed by nonpartisan security experts while the chairperson at each point in time will represent the zone at the National Security Council.
“We must also recreate our national security culture by mandating the kind of organisational culture change within the entire gamut of our law enforcement agencies that can win back the trust of the people.
“Finally, these security reforms must also be backed by intense international engagement through a two-tier foreign policy thrust (the Trans-Saharan and the Trans-Atlantic) to boost our capabilities, and to combat terrorism, banditry, and other forms of insurgency,” he said.
Bakare in the address, accused Tinubu of seeming attempts at state capture, describing the situation in Rivers State where the president declared a state of emergency as a theater of the absurd further endorsed by the National Assembly which he described as the most “spineless” in Nigeria’s recent history.
He took swipe at the National Assembly over the suspension of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, challenging the suspension of the Senator for demanding accountability and transparency from the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio.
He also condemned the verbal attacks in the Senate involving Ebonyi Senator Onyekachi Nwebonyi and former Education Minister, Dr. Obi Ezekwesili during the hearing on the suspension of Senator Natasha, saying the Senate has become an institution for political rascality.
With the statement of Senator Nwebonyi that Ezekwesili can’t be in the Senate, it means the institution is not the place for the brightest and the fittest and that the nation’s political institutions are “not designed for people of character and competence.”
He said Tinubu’s influence is through the made the National Assembly to become a “haven for legislative rascality,” rubber stamping every thing the President sent to them.
