Tunde Bakare: I’m under immense pressure to join ADC — but APC is my child

Tunde Bakare, founder of Citadel Global Community Church, says he is under immense pressure to join the African Democratic Congress (ADC) opposition coalition.

According to Punch newspaper, Bakare who spoke on Saturday during the inaugural edition of the Citadel School of Governance Dialogue Series, also ruled out the possibility of joining the ADC.

He said several prominent politicians, including a former governor and minister from the south-west, have been urging him to align with the ADC.

“There has been a lot of pressure on me from who is who to join ADC. They come to my home. Even while I was abroad, the hierarchy of that party kept calling, saying they needed my voice,” Bakare said.

The cleric said a younger political associate, who had benefitted from key positions in the All Progressives Congress (APC), also encouraged him to lend his influence to the ADC.

“I am not going to take part in ADC. The last time I knew about ADC was about a plane that crashed. I wish them well, because we need a robust opposition,” he said.

“But you don’t birth a child called APC and then try to kill it yourself. We are not going to have another Awolowo-Akintola crisis in the south-west.”

The preacher said Bola Tinubu’s presidency is divinely ordained.

“If God wants to remove ‘emilokan,’ He knows how to do it. You can’t get the kind of thing Tinubu has brought without God’s support,” he added.

Bakare was one of the aspirants who jostled for the APC presidential ticket, on the APC platform in 2023, alongside eventual winner Tinubu.

In 2011, Bakare was running mate to Muhammadu Buhari on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) — one of the legacy political parties that coalesced into the APC in 2013.