Barely 72 hours after the arrival of President Umaru Yar’Adua from Saudi Arabia, where he had gone for surgery, Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly, Lagos, has asked the president to resign and return home to Katsina State.
Bakare, who is generally regarded as an intrepid and straightforward preacher, said he could no longer keep silent, like all the other men of God in the country, in the face of chaos that is threatening to engulf the nation.
Pastor Bakare, who was preaching, yesterday, on the topic ‘The Downward Spiral of a Culture That Excludes God’ thundered: “I want you to live, but go home. We did not vote for your wife. Katsina is waiting to receive you. Umaru go home! Presidency is not a birthright neither is it hereditary.”
He added that because of the sensitive nature of the prevailing situation, in the event that the president leaves office, the Vice-President, Goodluck Jonathan, should be constitutionally sworn in to take over from Yar’Adua.
“But after he is sworn in, the Supreme Court could quash the election and the Senate President could rule for three months and another election could be conducted. Then there would be a president who would ensure steady progress.”
He declared that this was the ultimate solution to the problem the President’s illness has caused the whole nation.
The outspoken man of God, however, said it was not all about the illness. According to him, President Yar’Adua does not know what it takes to be a president, while he also stressed that there had been presidents who were able to rule their countries in the past even on wheelchair.
“How can we remain at a standstill? If the president has done anything at all since he came to power, he has put the country in reverse gear. Must we continue to fold our hands and sing ‘everything is going to be alright’? The country is in chaos. We are about to hit a tornado.“I am not a prophet of doom. The nation is at a standstill and no good nation would be on a standstill because one person is sick.”
He added that he’s one of those who prays ceaselessly for Yar’Adua to succeed, but not in the manner things are going now. “If anyone desired him to rule, I did. For the first time since I came of age, I called someone (Yar’Adua) my President because of his pedigree.
“I will support whoever God wants to be there and when God says it is over, I will be the first to blow the whistle,” Pastor Bakare said.
According to him, the failure of effective leadership in the country is the direct result of the failure of clergymen to speak the truth to those in power in the country. Rather than tell those in authority the truth, he said, men of God now have a way of deviating and preaching prosperity to their already impoverished congregation. “What are we now doing, including the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria? We are all saying let us pray for the President. When he was not sick what did he do? When you exclude God from the scheme of things and you privatise power, that is what happens,” he said, stressing that “the prevailing situation is like that of a messed up man with a messed up family coming to a messed up pastor of a church or churches in a messed up society producing a messed up nation.”
Bakare concluded by singing a song along with the congregation that Nigeria would flourish again as God is sending the “real president to liberate the country in no distant time.”
Meanwhile, After much speculations about his state of health, President Yar’Adua, this morning, resumed in his office at Aso Rock, Abuja. Among those who visited the president, this morning, were some governors and relatives. They include Governors Murtala Nyako of Adamawa and Alhaji Abubakar Idris of Kogi State. P.M.News also gathered that Yar’Adua will, this afternoon, decorate new service chiefs in his office.
http://thepmnews.com/2008/09/08/resign-now-pastor-bakare-tells-yaradua
