Tunde Bakare, an APC politician and pastor of Citadel Global Community Church, says that despite Bola Tinubu’s well-documented narcotics, forged academic records, and shady identity scandals, God still made him Nigeria’s president.

“I said, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with all the intellect and everything he did to be president of Nigeria, he didn’t make it. Look at his achievements and accomplishments. MKO, my God! He spent and was spent. Participated in an election. He won the election. They nullified it, and he never became president.

“You (Mr Tinubu) with all your excess baggage. I’m not trying to polish anything. I said I could not withstand what you withstood—cocaine, forged certificate, no father, no mother. Yet you won and was sworn in as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Now that God has given it to you, don’t play God,” Mr Bakare, in a snippet of a recent video of his sermon seen online over the weekend, said,

The politician cum pastor compared Mr Tinubu to the biblical lame in the book of Isaiah Chapter 33, warning the president not to play God.

“One of the things I told him (Mr Tinubu), please listen attentively, is that in Zion, the bible makes it plain the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king. He will save us. The judiciary, legislative and executive arms are vested in God.

“But, in the same passage, it says all the habitants of Zion shall be well. None of them shall be sick. But it is the lame that will take the prey. He said I don’t understand that. I said, ‘I will explain it to you’. You are the lame, Mr President. I will never say publicly what I’ve not said privately,” Mr Bakare told his congregants.

Bayo Onanuga, the spokesperson for Mr Tinubu, did not respond to Peoples Gazette’s request for comments on Mr Bakare’s statement.

Mr Tinubu’s involvement in narcotics trafficking saw him forfeit $460,000 to the U.S. government in 1993. That episode formed a large part of calls for his disqualification from running for the office of president. 

In 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois released fresh documents holding Mr Tinubu’s encounter with American authorities over allegations of narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

Similarly, Mr Tinubu’s Chicago State University certificate forgery scandal made the rounds as opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar approached the court to compel CSU to release Mr Tinubu’s academic record. However, the Supreme Court rejected the document, affirming Mr Tinubu’s victory in the 2023 presidential election.

A few months ago, Nasir El-Rufai, the former Kaduna governor, admitted that he and others supported Mr Tinubu’s presidential bid despite being aware of his Chicago cocaine and certificate forgery scandals.