Jonathan obviously afraid – Tunde Bakare

Outspoken pastor and leader of the Latter-Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has said that it is not yet uhuru in the country despite National Assembly’s pronouncement of Vice President Goodluck Jonathan as acting president.

In an exclusive interview with Saturday Sun, he said that with the current arrangement the country is still in danger, as, according to him, if anything happens to Jonathan, when there is no vice president, the nation will have problems.

Pastor Bakare asked the National Assembly to set up a medical team to examine the state of health of President Umar Yar’Adua, adding that if it is discovered that he is incapacitated, Jonathan should be sworn in as president, while a vice president is appointed.
He said that the Jonathan he saw on television on Tuesday was afraid, adding: “He is not comfortable on that seat and I don’t see how he can perform well on that seat when he has no proper authority to function.”
Bakare spoke on these and other issues.

Nigerians were surprised when you joined others to protest in the street at Abuja and Lagos. What informed your decision?
Well, first and foremost, it was a sense of duty and secondly a patriotic responsibility because we all cannot shut our eyes and watch what will spell doom and disintegration for our nation. The Bible called the church the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We must be involved in what is going on around us. We cannot live in a secure Island of prosperity in what I call the quick sound of poverty. As the salt of the earth we must step into every situation that would not contradict our faith. And we must maintain contact without contamination.

There is the criticism that as a man of God, you should have considered the fact that Yar’Adua is a humanbeing and he could fall ill at any time.
The truth of the matter is not that it is not the fault of Mr. President to be ill. It could happen to any humanbeing. If you go by proper records, how many people welcomed him, dancing and rejoicing that for the first time we had a graduate elected in the seat of power who will be able to read properly between lines and do what is right? And nobody is faulting him on the ground of sickness and I want you to remember that the Abuja rally took place 50 days after he had abandon the ship. And he was made to abandonee the ship because nobody can say categorically his state of health and the state of his mind at the time he was flown abroad.

If the leadership of the nation had taken care of our health care delivery system and invested in the health sector very well, some of the doctors from Nigeria attending to them in Saudi Arabia will stay in their country and attend to them here. It is a pathetic situation that the country is sick and unfortunately is now headed by a sick president. The difference between Nigeria and Mr. President is that the president is receiving expensive treatment abroad and Nigeria is receiving none.

Therefore, 50 days after the hallowed chambers rediscovered being filled with shallow minds and nothing constructive was being done, we felt it is part of the prophetic responsibility not only to take to the street but to tell the government that enough was enough, so that our people can be properly enlightened and they can rise in what I call civilian revolt to take power away from those who have hijacked it. The common thing they were saying was power vacuum.

There was no power vacuum in Nigeria but there was power hijack. Those who were not elected took over the responsibilities of Mr. President and were executing his agenda without his consent and without being in proper mind frame and without transmitting anything to anyone. If that does not concern Nigerians, it will then mean that we are a bunch of irresponsible citizens.

Goodluck Jonathan has been pronounced acting president. Are you satisfied?
Who pronounced him acting president?

The National Assembly
The National Assembly simply passed a resolution and I saw him last night like a weather beaten, battered and totally afraid man reading from a telly- printer from the wall, a statement that has been written for him without any conviction or persuasion from his body language. Yes, to a certain extent, they have followed the doctrine of necessity. I just want to remind the nation that necessity may be the mother of invention; it is not necessarily the mother of virtues. I can’t see any legal backing for what they have done. Constitutionally speaking, I think we should go a step further.

The reason I am saying that is a resolution based on a letter transmitted by the president to the Senate or to the National Assembly would necessarily warrant their resolution, which could help resolve the constitutional logjam by stepping up the role of the vice president to that of acting president. That is within the framework and the mindset of the law. I am also a student of the Bible. Most of the time, Jesus Himself thought that it is the spirit that gives life, the word that I speak on to you, they are spirit and they are live. Whether the content of what he said, if he was the one who spoke over BBC Hausa, is another thing.

We have not even established if he was the one who spoke. But let us assume he did and let us assume he was publicized and it was on every website, we take it that the man was not in a state of mind to write a letter when he was going and he had found a way of communicating , saying, ‘I am perennially sick, I don’t know when I will recover and I don’t know when I am returning,’ then what the Senate and the House of Representatives reluctantly did will not be out of place.

But there is danger. The danger now is that we are back to the time of the military when a governor is replaced with a sole administrator, especially during transition period. The reason I am saying that is, we now have an acting president and there is a vacancy in the office of the vice president. If anything goes haywire or if Mr. Goodluck is kidnapped or anything happens to him then you make Mark the necessary administrator to fill the gap again. In no time, you are back in square one. Remember, yes it was a near unanimous decision but not everybody supported it. So, expect litigation in the days to come by those who are pro-Yar’Adua and we don’t know the mindset of Turai, who had essentially been head of state since November last year. She pulled the lever wherever she is.

The woman was never voted into power.
So, there is still a gap with the sole administrator, who is called the acting president. If we may ask, before he became acting president, what authority did he have to order the military to go to Jos? Maybe you now backdate authority and sign it or whatever it is. I don’t think it is Huhuru yet. The proper thing must still be done. If these people are thinking reasonably he ought to write before leaving. He left 70 or 80 days ago; you are now translating and interpreting what you heard on BBC radio – a voice you have not even confirmed that it is the person who spoke.

I think what we need to do is to bury our heads in shame and do things properly. Dora Akuyili has presented a memo and we have also read in the paper that it was not listed last Wednesday. Let us hope that it would be listed and let us hope that they would do the proper thing. They should constitute a proper medical panel to determine his state of health. I am of the considered opinion that our president is incapacitated. I am of the considered opinion that he could not be seen without the nation being frightened by what has remained of the president. If he is totally incapacitated, we do not need a president that is plugged to a life-support machine in Abuja.

That is not the purpose of Aso Rock and of the office of the President. He should be taken to Katsina when he is discharged so that he can recover. Let him write his memo as somebody who served the nation to the best of his ability before the health situation cropped in. Let the Senate set up a proper medical team to determine the state of his health, establish his incapacity, swear in Goodluck as president and fill the office of the vice president and we can begin to look at issues more accurately. Until then, there is still instability everywhere.

Do you think Jonathan can now effectively discharge the functions of president?
You look at the circumstances that brought the president to a position of authority. Let me take it from there. The state governors are afraid of being exposed. They pleaded with the Senate. If money passed hands and looting continues, a destructive means cannot bring about a constructive end. We would soon see whether he is going to perform or not. Let’s leave time to decide that.

The full commander-in-chief supposedly voted for, has not been able to do anything because of all kinds of compromises the government had been bedeviled with. We have a nation that is becoming a forest of demons. We are now hearing voices. With discordant voices and the house is divided against itself and the chicken has begun to eat its own intestine, Akuiyili is suing Aondoakaa and Aondoakaa is being called a liar in public; the whole set up is already ruined. Except if Mr. Goodluck would do his magic wand that made him the deputy governor, an acting governor and a governor. He was vice president, now acting president and hopefully president. If he has the magic wand, we shall see. But I do not expect anything good to come out of evil.

Could you expatiate on the idea of the acting president being a sole administrator?
It is as simple as ABC. Because the rigorous process of doing things legally and properly has been short-circuited. Nigerians are today sighing in relieve that at least we are OK. But now, we are just jumping from frying pan to fire. If you watch his broadcast last Tuesday, you will know the man was sitting on one side of his buttocks. His eyes glued on what he was reading.

When he didn’t read it well, he turns his eyes. So, you know that he is not comfortable. Maybe they will assure him, maybe the heads of the armed forces and others will come and salute him. After all, for the first time in his life, there was the national flag and National Anthem. Maybe that will encourage him. Maybe the Sultan of Sokoto and all the Obas and Obis who feel Nigeria is a kingdom and not a republic will encourage him. Now you see things that are going on.

The Bible says all the goodness of life shall follow us all the days of our lives and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I think his wife is Patience. So what is going on is that Goodluck and Patience shall follow us all the days of our lives and we shall dwell in this nation forever, Amen. He is not comfortable on that seat and I don’t see how he can perform well when he has no proper authority to function.

People are now worried about possible military intervention. What do you think?
Well, let the military look at their track record. Let them check if at any time they intervened they left Nigeria better. Any attempt by the military to come and disrupt democracy that is going on and we are still trying to figure out, any attempt to come out from their barracks to take over government, they should be ready to kill one million people. Some of us would resist them with everything we have. Citizen revolt is bloodier than the bloodiest coup. They will not even dare.

The nation has moved beyond that. We are not afraid of the military at all. They remain servants of the Nigerian nation to ward off external aggression and to quell internal rebellion. That is their constitutional duty and any attempt to go beyond that will backfire on them; retroactively we will bring others who have done it to book someday.

• Continued next Saturday


Sunnews