Nigerian Pastor, Tunde Bakare, has disclosed
details of his meetings with former President
Goodluck Jonathan, and what he benefitted from
the former leader while he was in office.
Mr. Bakare, a former running-mate of President
Muhammadu Buhari on the platform of defunct
Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in 2011,
said he wrote four -point letter to Mr. Jonathan,
calling his attention to the level of impunity in his
administration.
Giving details of what he benefitted from the
immediate past president, Mr. Bakare said, “Let
everyone declare what he has received. I can tell
you what I received. I took two people there one
day and he invited us to dinner. I had a bad sore
throat that day, so I took a pass regarding the dinner.
“Another day, I took a couple there and I took a
cup of tea. I told you about the $50,000 which I
refused, but that was Orubebe. He sent me a cow
at Christmas – which I gave the staff to kill – and a
hamper through our pastor in Abuja, but I told him to keep it.”
Mr. Bakare stated this in an interview with an
Abuja-based magazine, THE INTERVIEW.
The pastor revealed that at a point, the former
president offered to give him “something”, which
he refused and opted for simply a pen.
“Finally, when the opportunity came and he
(Jonathan) said, ‘I will like to give you
something’. I [then] said ‘I like pens: so if you
must give me anything, let it be a pen, so that I
can show it to my people and say ‘the president
gave me a pen,’” he disclosed.
He said one day, after a meeting with Mr.
Jonathan, a former minister in charge of Niger
Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, rushed to offer
him $50,000 for “transport”, an offer the pastor
said he turned down.
“When we were leaving, Orubebe ran after me and offered me $50,000 for my transport. I said,
‘Haba, take your money, I am not for sale’. We
said goodbye to him and the rest is history,” Mr.
Bakare said.
Giving details of his meeting with the former
president, Mr. Bakare said, “When he (Jonathan)
became president, I said to him, ‘the things we
marched and protested against, you are now
perpetrating them – the same impunity’”.
“I gave him four points in writing. Before we left
Lagos, I gave a copy to Pastor Adeboye and
another to General Alani Akinrinade. I said, ‘we
are going to say goodbye to this man’ because if
a man cannot keep his own side of the bargain,
because if you got here by the grace of God and not because of any pedigree and, within 10
years, had become the president of Nigeria.
“God has brought you into the kingdom for such
a time as this, so you cannot begin to commit the
same impunity,” he said.
Mr. Bakare said in another meeting with the
former president, he (Jonathan) told him that he
needed someone to tell him the truth.
“He reached out to me later and said, ‘look, let’s
put that behind us; Nigeria’s situation is critical.’”
“Before I went, I called General Buhari and said
‘this man invited me, I don’t know what for.’
When I got there, he said he needed someone
who could tell him the truth always. I said, ‘if that is what you want, you have me at your side,’” he
said.
Mr. Bakare therefore challenged religious leaders
to declare what Mr. Jonathan gave him, saying
the clergy did not tell the former president the
truth because they benefitted from him.
“However, you see, Christian leaders benefitted
tremendously from his administration in terms of
licences and waivers. The thing is, when you
allow those in power to get you into any
compromise, speaking to them will be very
difficult.
“I don’t know if any of those allegations were
true, but I have seen enough to begin to think
that they were not able to use our overwhelming
influence. If you have benefitted from evil, you
cannot talk about it, nor criticize it. Let everyone
declare what he has received,” Mr. Bakare said in the magazine interview.
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