Bakare Warns Coup Plotters, Power Mongers

• Says Buhari is still alive

Shola Oyeyipo

Former vice-presidential running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari during the 2011 general election and founder, Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, yesterday warned those wishing the president dead and those eyeing the presidency to have a rethink, saying nothing will happen to Buhari.

Speaking during a state-of-the-nation address at his church in Lagos with the theme: ‘Birth Pangs to a New Nigeria’, Bakare, who is also the convener, Save Nigeria Group (SNG), warned power mongers speculating the president’s death as a basis to grab power to desist from such act or face the wrath of God.

The political activist who drew inferences from the biblical stories of Absalom and Adonijah who both haboured what he tagged “inordinate ambitions” to take over power from King David while on sick bed, said all ploys to hijack power by some elements in the corridor of power will fail because President Buhari is still alive.

“Because of the present health challenge of our president, many think it is the end. They are preparing their horses and chariots of war, forgetting that victory belongs to God. All coup plotters and their collaborators, trouble is coming’ upon your head. We gave you the uniform. We gave you the guns. Why would you use them against us? Caution must be exercised by those in military testing the water of coup,” he said.

 Though he admitted that the “diminishing health challenges” of President Buhari is not the best for Nigeria at a time the country requires strong leadership, Bakare emphasised that it is incorrect to give the president up for dead.

 “Who can say who is the first to die between the patient in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the doctor? Only God knows who will die first. Scenario and permutations do not work because I know scenarios are also in the minds of the people. But he (Buhari) is not dead yet. Stop the postulation and scenario,” he urged.

Comparing the current situation in Nigeria to labour pains, Bakare said: “What Nigeria is going through is not new or strange. We are in birth pangs. Nigeria is in intensive labour. The president is serving the nation he loves with diminishing health. Nigeria needs anointed midwives to deliver her painlessly.

“Those within the polity with inordinate ambitions to take over power by all means will have themselves to blame because your inordinate ambition will kill your children in your lifetime. 

“There are things happening behind the scene. All the actors in the corridor of power can keep on trying but the residual power still resides in the hand of he that is old.”

On the alleged coup plot, the clergy who said Nigerians as the rest of the world are against military intervention, vowed to mobilise Nigerians to vehemently resist such action.

“Though I have said I will not march again but if they dare, I will mobilise the forces of the nation against any military incursion. They will be taking us back to the woods. Even as bad as Trump is the military is not threatening him,” he said.