The Serving Overseer of Citadel Global Community Church, formerly known as Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, on Saturday, reaffirmed his conviction that he had a date with history as Nigeria prepares to choose its 16th leader in 2023.
In an address, titled, ‘The Portrait of a New Nigeria: The 16th Unveiled’, which he delivered during a virtual meeting with some Nigerians in the Diaspora, the clergyman declared, “I do have a vision of a New Nigeria that was birthed in me from childhood and an honest aspiration to serve as the 16th president of my beloved nation, Nigeria.”
It was the umpteenth time that Bakare would be telling the world that he would be Nigeria’s President after the incumbent, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), who is the nation’s 15th leader.
The preacher, who was Buhari’s running mate during the former’s failed presidential bid in 2011 on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change, had first in September 2019 declared that he would succeed Buhari by a divine arrangement come 2023.
“I’ll probably be the first President preaching on Sunday,” he said then in an address delivered in his Lagos church.
At Saturday’s ‘Virtual Meeting Towards Unveiling Project 16 to Nigerians in the Diaspora, Courtesy of PTB4Nigeria’, Bakare, who said becoming Nigeria’s President was a vision he had conceived from childhood, reiterated his earlier declaration that the number 16 was significant for him, as the staircase in his father’s house had 16 flights.
He said, “As a young boy, I had a vision of Nigeria. I grew up in my father’s house in Abeokuta, a storey building with 16 steps, which today is the first family heritage historical museum in Abeokuta courtesy of the Ogun State Government during the Otunba Gbenga Daniel administration.
“As a child, I was groomed in the traditions of my fathers and graduated from Koranic school on April 16, 1967. Just before that day, on April 10, 1967, exactly 55 years ago tomorrow (Sunday), as a 12-year-old, I saw myself in a night dream climbing the 16 steps in my father’s house. I exited through a door that opened up to a mountain top, where I took a seat between two of Nigeria’s notable leaders, General Yakubu Gowon, who was the then Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was then the leader of government business.
“In the said dream, we were overlooking Nigeria and strategising on how to shape the future of the nation. That dream stirred in me an unquenchable conviction about Nigeria’s great destiny and my role in the fulfilment of that destiny. Afterwards, I understood that the 16 steps in my father’s house in Abeokuta were symbolic of the 16 administrations in Nigeria from independence to the next administration, and a pointer to the fact that I would play a leading role as we approach the 16th step to the Nigeria of our dreams.”
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