THE Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Tunde Bakare, has blamed Nigerian Christian leaders for the emergence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Muslim-Muslim ticket ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Presidential candidate of the APC Bola Tinubu picked former Borno State governor Kashim Shettima as his running mate, a development which has been widely condemned by many Nigerian Christians, including the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
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In a press statement issued in Lagos on Sunday, Bakare, a former APC presidential aspirant, said Christian leaders in the country have propagated a wrong notion of politics which led to the political marginalisation of Christians.
He said, “As Christian leaders, we must also realise that the Church in Nigeria today is paying for decades of erroneous teaching that Christians have no business in politics.
“What is happening today is the price we are paying or having to pay for the years of failure of the Church to strategically participate in the political process.”
Bakare also faulted the attitude of Christian leaders towards clergymen who go into active politics.
“The antagonism that was meted on some of us who have ventured from the pulpit to the podium even from among our Christian leaders was always a pointer that a day will come when the Church will face a rude awakening of the consequence of passivity,” he said.
Bakare advised Christian leaders to negotiate their interests with all the presidential candidates of the various political parties.
He however said they must do so with an open mind of nation-building and national development.
“Nigerian Christian leaders must answer the cogent question of what kind of nation do Nigerian Christians want?”
Bakare was President Muhammadu Buhari’s running mate in the 2011 presidential election.
Sinafi Omanga is a multimedia journalist and researcher with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. He has a keen interest in humanitarian reporting, social justice, and environment.
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