I’ll succeed Buhari as president, Tunde Bakare says in trending video

Senior pastor of the Latter Rain Assembly, Tunde Bakare, has declared his intention to run for the post of Nigerian president in 2023.

The 64 years old Bakare, hailed from Abeokuta, Ogun State said in a video circulating on Facebook and Twitter that there was a divine arrangement for him to become Nigeria’s president when President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure ends in 2023.

“Take it to the mountain top, if you have never heard it before, I am saying it to you this morning in the scheme of things, as far as politics of Nigeria is concerned, President Muhammadu Buhari is number 15, and I am number 16,” Mr Bakare said in the video, as he paced up and down a podium, most likely in his church, in Lagos.

Bakare was Mr Buhari’s running mate in 2011 when the later ran unsuccessfully in that year’s presidential election.

The pastor said in the video, “If he (Buhari) wants to run in 2019, I do not oppose. He’s still number 15. It’s when he steps out that I step in,” an indication that he must have made the declaration before the 2019 general elections.

The congregants, as seen in the video, shouted, jumped, and waved their hands to heavens, apparently thanking God for the pastor’s declaration.

“I have never said that to you before. I make it plain this morning, I let you know it this morning, nothing can change it in the name of Jesus.

“He (Buhari) is number 15, I am number 16.”

The congregants, most of them still standing, kept shouting again, and again.

Bakare, making reference to some biblical figures, said President Buhari cannot take Nigeria beyond a certain point.

“His assignment is like that of Moses to take Nigeria to River Jordan, but he can’t cross it; it will take a Joshua to go to the other side and begin to distribute resources to the people of this nation.

“To this end, was I born. And for this purpose, came I into the world,” said Bakare, apparently referring to himself as the man with a divine mandate to take the nation to where Buhari cannot.

Bakare has been trending on Twitter since Monday morning because of the video.