The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has said that the results of the 2023 elections revealed that Nigerians are tired of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Bakare, who contested at the 2022 presidential primary of the APC, said this on Sunday during a State of the Nation Broadcast, at the church at Ikeja, Lagos.
During his speech themed, ‘Vice, Virtue & Time: Three Things That Never Stand Still,’ [b]the cleric and politician said the APC he joined to form had deviated from the principles it was founded on.[/b]
The cleric said, “At this juncture, I must also sound a warning to the APC. I was there when the APC was formed and the extent of my involvement is well documented. As a stakeholder and more importantly as a nation builder, I’m more obligated to state without equivocation that this is not the APC we envisaged. The results of the last elections were clear indications that Nigerians are fed up with what the APC had become.”
He said the fact that the votes polled by the APC during the 2023 presidential election declined from what it had in 2015 and 2019, was an indication that there was a loss of support base for the party.
“If it were not for the divisions within the Peoples Democratic Party and the emergence of the Obidient movement of the Labour Party that split the traditional support base of the PDP, the APC would have convincingly lost the 2023 elections. Even now, the party’s victory as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission is being challenged in court,” Bakare added.
In the February 2023 presidential election, INEC declared President Bola Tinubu as the winner after polling a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, who scored 6,984,520 to emerge second. Labour Party’s Obi came third by polling 6,101,533 votes. The outcome of the election is still being challenged by the PDP and the LP at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal.
According to Bakare, the APC has now become a platform for politicians “with no ideology”, who moved from one party to the other to seek power at all costs.
“The APC stood for progressivism characterised by substantial positive investment in social sectors such as education and healthcare and it achieved inclusiveness and social mobility,” he added, saying this has changed over time given the current economic hardship being faced by many Nigerians which he said were a result of “anti-people policies” of the government