The Presiding overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, CGCC, Pastor Tunde Bakare has urged Nigerian leaders to immortalise former president Muhammadu Buhari.
Bakare, an associate of the late Awujale of Ijebu Land, Oba Sikiru Adetona and the late former president, Buhari, made the appeal at a news conference on Sunday to pay tribute to the late leaders.
According to Bakare, the exit of the leaders, who were his great friends and nationalists on the same day, should be a rallying point for harnessing their patriotic legacies to move the nation forward.
“I found myself pondering the fact that both leaders died the same day,” the pastor said.
Bakare, a former presidential running mate to Buhari, eulogised their lives and legacies, saying that the three of them were friends brought together by providence for national cohesion.
He said that Buhari’s dream for a better Nigeria was peerless and resonated in his integrity and forthrightness to the nation’s development while in office.
“The best Nigeria could do for the late former president is to advance his dream of a functional Nigeria, a Nigeria where there will no longer be oppression of any kind, advancement of the rule of law and judicious deployment of the nation’s resources for the common good,” he added.
Bakare tasked Nigeria leaders to build on Buhari’s legacies for an equitable and just nation.
He decried the near one party state the nation might be narrowing into saying that such negated the progressive principles the former president stood for.
He said that Buhari’s quest for good governance and his policy interventions, including the not too young to run, opened the political space and paved the way for young Nigerians to be part of the nation’s politics.
According to him, Buhari’s progressive stance can be deployed as a social mobilisation template that when internalised, can change the nation’s social-economic sphere to advance development..
Speaking of the late Awujale, Bakare expressed a deep sadness at his demise, referring to him as a father figure.
Immortalise Buhari – Bakare urges leaders