Pastor Bakare: I’ll lead nationwide protest against military coup in Nigeria

Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly and Convener, Save Nigeria Group, SNG has said that he would personally lead a nationwide protest against any attempt by the military to oust the present democratic system of government in Nigeria.

The pastor said although a civilian government may be bad, it is however preferable to the military government which he said would only plunge the nation backward.

“We don’t want the military to return to power. I have said I will not participate in any protest again, but if the military dares return, I will personally mobilise all the forces in this country to hit the streets and protest. It is not a threat but a promise.”

Recall that Pastor Bakare who was the vice presidential candidate to now President Muhammadu Buhari in 2011 under the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) had, in January this year and while commenting on the agitations in the country and the non-negotiable stance of Nigeria said that, “The notion that the Nigerian nation is non-negotiable will remain contested through agitations, until we summon enough courage to put it to the test, and prove, through the outcome, that we are indeed prepared to become a truly united nation.”

He had, during a state of the nation address in Lagos, also thrown his weight behind the agitation for the restructuring of the country, saying only it can correct the fundamental flaws in the policy.

He equally faulted the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, for refusing to heed the call for restructuring.

“The hues and cries for restructuring in our nation appear not to have been well received by this present government. The inquisitive may ask: Why must we restructure? We must restructure to correct the flaws in our federal system.

“A federated state is defined as a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federal union.

“In a true federal system, previously sovereign states agree to confer their individual sovereignties on a central government. In other words, the states create the federal government, as was the case with the original thirteen American colonies.

“This was also the case when the Nigerian federal system was originally conceived by our founding fathers. Prior to the coming of the colonialists, sovereignty was domiciled in empires, kingdoms, city-states and republican villages. It was, however, taken over by the colonialists at which point it resided in the British crown.”

Lamenting that the current crop of leaders have deviated from the ideology of the nation’s founding fathers, Bakare said: “Our founding fathers agreed that Nigeria would be a truly federal state with limited and specific powers allocated to the federal government and residual powers inherent in the regional governments.”

“This agreement was the social contract upon which the Nigerian state was formed, but this social contract was broken on May 24, 1966 through the Unification Decree by Gen. J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi’s administration. That was the day Nigeria died.

“Five decades later, in spite of the reversal of the Unification Decree by Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s administration resulting in the division of Nigeria into twelve states, this deviation from the landmarks set by the fathers is a crucial reason for our disjointed nationhood and the perennial socioeconomic decay. It is why efforts at economic diversification by government after government, including the present government, have failed to yield the expected results.”