Tunde Bakare speaks on Jonathan, Orubebe and Christian leaders

Nigerian Pastor, Tunde Bakare, has shared details of his experiences with former President Goodluck Jonathan as well as former Niger Delta Minister, Godsday Orubebe.

In an interview with an Abuja-based magazine, The Interview, Pastor Bakare, shared the tale of his meetings with Jonathan, as well as the disservice of Christian leaders towards the former President.

Read below:

“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.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.”

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.”

“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.

“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 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.”

“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.”