SAN FRANCISCO, March 27, (THEWILL) – Former running-mate to President Muhammadu Buhari and Serving Overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, on Sunday condemned the mode of arrests carried out by the Police over the clash between the indigenes and the Hausa community in Ile-Ife.
Speaking while delivering a sermon entitled: ‘The raising of a model leader’ in his church, Bakare described as “an abuse” the arrest of some Yoruba as suspects in the clash and the justification of the arrest by the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris that crime neither has tribe nor identity.
It would be recalled that the police had paraded 20 suspects of Yoruba extraction, including a monarch, in Abuja last week, alleging that they masterminded the riot in the town on March 8, where 46 persons reportedly lost their lives.
But while harping on the importance of justice and equity in nation-building, Bakare wondered what could have informed the arrest of members of a party in the crisis, leaving out the culprits on the other side.
“If there is a fight between two people, you don’t arrest one person and leave the other. What you do is to arrest the two and let the law takes its course. To arrest one party and leave the other and even go ahead to justify it is an abuse.
“No one should be allowed to promote ethnic agenda in the country. That is not the way of righteousness,” he asserted.
He equally accused those he described as “sons of disobedience” around Buhari of leaking a memo, written by the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, to the President. He claimed that they deliberately leaked the memo to create friction between the President and the governor to fulfil their selfish interests.
Revealing that he joined El-Rufai to deliver the letter to Buhari at the Presidential Villa last year, the cleric said, “I can never deny that I knew about the memo; I knew about it. I flew from Lagos to meet El-Rufai in Abuja to discuss the contents with President Buhari. There were just three of us at the meeting.
“The memo was an assessment of what was going on; where mistakes had been made and things were not going on well; and what could be done to move the country forward.
“It was not an attack on anybody or on the President but some sons of disobedience around President Buhari leaked the memo to Sahara Reporters to make it look as if it was meant to attack the President for their own selfish interests.
“Can you imagine that the memo was written in September last year and some people think that they could gain from that? Woe betides anyone who thinks he can further his interest by manipulating anything in this era.”
Coming short of mentioning the names of those he believe leaked the memo, Bakare, who contested as running mate to Buhari in the 2011 presidential election on the platform of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change, said it was too late for anyone to set him against the President.
He pointed out that most Nigerian leaders “hate those who love them and love those who hate them”, regretting that some leaders of the nation only listened to those who did not wish them well.
