Bakare to Tinubu: Stop playing Ostrich, be courageous to tackle insecurity, reconcile Nigeria

The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (CGCC), Pastor Tunde Bakare, has issued a strong challenge to President Bola Tinubu, urging him to “stop playing ostrich” and address the crippling insecurity and fundamental issues plaguing the country.

In a comprehensive state of the nation address titled ‘The Darkness Before Dawn’, the fiery televangelist expressed deep worry that Nigeria has found itself at the heart of a crisis, lamenting that **“the level of insecurity seems to have worsened in response to this global focus on Nigeria as terrorists and bandits brazenly dare the Nigerian state.”

Bakare specifically urged the President to restructure the country’s security architecture and avoid prioritizing politics over comprehensive national reform.

Bakare presented President Tinubu with a stark choice regarding his approach to governance: “Today, President Bola Tinubu stands at the threshold of history. The president has a choice: either to embark on the holistic reform of the security and governance framework and address the Nigeria Question, or, like his predecessors, to prioritise politics with 2027 in view, to restrain his actions, to administer piecemeal or superficial interventions, and to approach the situation in fits and starts.”

While acknowledging ongoing government efforts, the cleric called for greater courage and decisive action: “While we acknowledge the ongoing efforts of the president to address the situation—from the declaration of emergency on security to the mass recruitment into the police force—we challenge the president, who, prior to his presidency, was an advocate of geopolitical restructuring, to rise up to the occasion and take the bull by the horns.”

Bakare noted that the initial jolt to address the security crisis came partly from external pressure: “Our country has found itself in the centre of an unfolding storm. It began with the announcement by President Donald Trump of the United States, re-designing Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern over allegations of a government-tolerated killing of Christians. The US president’s subsequent threat to come into our country “guns-a-blazing”, to undertake what he described as a “fast, vicious and sweet” attack on terrorists, has jolted a hitherto sleeping giant into sudden frenzy.”

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He added that within the same period, “the existential dangers that once lurked beneath the surface of our national life are now breaking through, demanding urgent attention even as terrorists intensify their threats and attacks against the Nigerian state.”

The Pastor stressed that the core issues facing the nation are encapsulated in the “Nigeria Question,” which remains fundamentally unresolved: “The Nigeria Question comprises a series of fundamental issues at the very core of our nationhood. They force us to ask: Who is a Nigerian? What minimum standard of dignity must every Nigerian be guaranteed? Under what terms should the diverse groups within our borders coexist? What is the value of a Nigerian life? And how should Nigerians be governed? The events of the past few weeks show clearly that, 65 years after independence, we have still not answered these questions.”

He argued that this unresolved nature manifests in political and economic instability: “The Nigerian Question has a North-South dimension with its political, economic, social, legal and environmental complexities. It is at the root of the divisive politics for which the country has resorted to the unspoken convention of zoning. Political parties that have failed to manage this dimension have found themselves in disarray. This dimension of the Nigerian Question explains the perception of the political dominance of the North over the South since Nigeria’s independence and the economic dominance of the South over the North through resource distribution and revenue allocation.”

Bakare explicitly condemned the government’s approach to the farmer-herder crisis, arguing that mischaracterization has allowed terrorism to fester. “The state’s failure to address long-standing disputes between Hausa farmers and Fulani pastoralists has allowed local tensions to mutate into a sophisticated and deeply entrenched network of terror,” he added.

The cleric tasked the Federal Government to tackle terrorism by all means, accusing the government of evasion: “The Nigerian government has a clear and urgent duty to protect these Middle Belt communities, who have carried the weight of violence for far too long. Rather than play the ostrich and cover up clear terrorism as mere farmer-herder clashes, the Nigerian state has a responsibility to invade the camps of armed marauders who hide under the cloak of herdsmen of whatever ethnicity, and who invade defenceless communities and gleefully massacre unarmed men, women and children. It is a shame on the Nigerian government that these communities would resort to calling on the American government to help because their government has failed them woefully.”

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