The Presiding Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (CGCC), Tunde Bakare, has urged Nigerian leaders to immortalise former president Muhammadu Buhari with good governance.

Mr Bakare, an associate of the late Awujale of Ijebuland, 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.

The conference was held at the CGCC, Oregun Lagos.

Mr Buhari and the Awujale died on July 13.

According to Mr Bakare, death of the leaders, who were his great friends and nationalists 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.

Mr Bakare, a former presidential running mate to Mr Buhari, eulogised their lives and legacies, saying that the three of them were friends brought together by providence for national cohesion.

He said that Mr 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 cleric said, “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.”

Mr Bakare tasked Nigeria leaders to build on Mr Buhari’s legacies for an equitable and just nation.

He decried the near one-party state the nation might be narrowing to, 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,” law opened the political space and paved the way for young Nigerians to be part of the nation’s politics.

According to him, Mr 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.

He stated, “Buhari was a man with a dream of a New Nigeria—a dream he lived for,

pursued persistently despite the challenges he encountered; one whose kind would be a tall order to find again. This was a man whose integrity and discipline gave hope.  A colossus has departed our land—one for whom there can hardly be  an ordinary Nigerian. A man whose lifelong desire was to better life for his people. I had the privilege of teaming up with him in his tireless quest to fulfil; a dream he worked tirelessly toward, from his youth.”

Speaking of the late Awujale, Mr Bakare expressed a deep sadness at his demise, referring to him as a father figure.

He added, “As Awujale’s body is laid to rest, I find it necessary to honour a man who never said no to me.  There was nothing I asked Kabiyesi for—on behalf of others—that he will not give. Awujale was instrumental in the coalition of the parties that formed the All Progressives Congress (APC) through which Buhari emerged president. May God strengthen and comfort Olori Adetona, their children, grandchildren, Ogun State government and the people,  and may the noble soul of kabiyesi rest in perfect peace.’’

(NAN)