2023: Nothing Will Stop Me from Succeeding Buhari, Says Bakare

•Vouches for president’s support to realise ambition

Fidelis David

The Serving Overseer at the Citadel Global Community Church, formerly The Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has reiterated with utmost confidence that he would succeed President Muhammadu Buhari as the 16th president of Nigeria in 2023.

Bakare said this yesterday at the10th Anniversary Lecture of Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, in Ifedore council area of Ondo State, titled: “Nigeria Beyond 2023: Reversing the Human Capital Paradox”.

The pastor-politician, who is one of the most vocal clergymen in Nigeria and one-time convener of Save Nigeria Group (SNG), said he had a destined role to play in changing current situation of the country, saying nothing could change it because he was born for that purpose.

According to him, “I am going to contest. In a very meaningful way, with the support of number 15 to become the number 16 president of Nigeria. In 2018, I wrote a book titled the woman, who saw the future, valuable lessons my mother taught me.

“In that book, I wrote that from Tafawa Balewa to the current president, 15 people have led this nation. I have a destined role to play, when it gets to 16 and I mean that since April 1967. So, it is not about time to die, it is about time to live. So, you are going to be involved to change this nation.

“I am not a politician but a nation builder. When the right time comes, opportunity will create itself for us to do what we need to do,” he said, emphasising the need for human capital development, which he said must begin at the level of the individual and brings to the fore, the skills, competences, training, and experience of the individual.

Continuing, he stated that, “For citizens to commit to deploying their individual earned capacities towards the national interest, there must be a highly compelling national vision. A compelling national vision will give our young people the best quality education.

“It will facilitate innovative solutions to Nigeria’s socio-economic challenges. It will catalyse job creation as we convert our problems to opportunities. It will keep citizens healthy and secure. It will compel the highly competent Nigerian in diaspora to return home physically or virtually to build a great nation.

“I am here to present to you a vision of Nigeria that is attainable by 2030; a vision of the New Nigeria, a nation of peace, progress, prosperity and possibilities. Beyond 2023, building upon Mr President’s audacious goal to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, we are determined to build the New Nigeria, a nation that works for every Nigerian.

“The New Nigeria is a nation, where no one goes to bed hungry and no child is left out of school without access to quality education; where our homes, schools, streets, villages, highways and cities are safe and secure, and Nigerians can work, play or travel with their minds at rest, and go to bed with their hearts at peace.

“A Nigeria, where our hospitals are lifesaving institutions and every Nigerian has access to good quality healthcare; where no youth is unemployed and our young men and women are job creators; where businesses thrive on innovation and made in Nigeria can compete anywhere in the global market; where homes and businesses have access to clean and uninterrupted power supply and ideas are facilitated by functional infrastructure and cutting edge technology.”

The vice-presidential candidate to the current president, Buhari, in the 2011 presidential election, also emphasised the need for free education and good parenting as panacea for peace in society, adding that there was the need for massive employment opportunities for the country’s youths.

His words: “We must headhunt the best hearts, heads and hands and place them in strategic roles. To achieve this, we must standardise public sector leadership recruitment by designing well-defined job descriptions and performance evaluation indices for every position of public leadership, from the federal to the local government.

“To design an accurate picture of Nigeria’s human capital needs, and to plan adequately to bridge the deficits, we require a National Human Capital Database (NHCD) as a Public-Private Partnership initiative.

“The NHCD will profile the competences and experiences of every Nigerian at home and in the diaspora with a view to matching opportunities in the public and private sectors with available skills. The NHCD will be a product of collaboration between the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the federal and state ministries of education,” Bakare said.

In his remarks, founder of the university and chairman of Toyota Nigeria Limited, Chief Michael Ade Ojo, said the university was established to correct the rot in the education system of the country and also improve standards.

He explained that the school was also born out of his vision to give back to his people and put Ilara-mokin community on the world map.