The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, on Saturday, declared his intention to vie for Nigeria’s oval office and succeed the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in 2023.
The cleric announced this during a virtual meeting tagged ‘Unveiling Project 16 to Nigerians in Diaspora’, with the theme ‘The portrait of a new Nigeria’, organised by the PTB4Nigeria in diaspora group.
He said with arrays of challenges bedeviling the country, there was need for a leader who understand the current of Nigeria and would best unite the nation for the needed development.
According to him, against the backdrop of the prevailing state of the nation, we need a leader who can reconcile grievous historical and current differences, reintegrate the various ethnic and religious constituent parts into true nationhood, and rebuild the broken walls of federalism while maximising Nigeria’s diverse geo-economic potential.
“This brings me to the brand, PTB. PTB is currently an acronym for Pastor ‘Tunde Bakare. The PTB brand is the rallying point for ‘Project 16.’
“Nevertheless, Project 16 is not just about me. It is not about the presidential ambition of any man. In any case, I do not have a self-generated ambition. What I do have is a vision of a New Nigeria that was birthed in me from childhood and an honest aspiration to serve as the sixteenth president of my beloved nation, Nigeria.”
He added that his mission to be the country’s sixteenth administration was borne out of the need to birth the “New Nigeria”.
Bakare said, “Birthing the New Nigeria is the mission of the sixteenth administration. 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 cuttingedge technology.”