Pastors encouraging corrupt leaders – Bakare
Pastor Tunde Bakare
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Convener, Save Nigeria Group, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has accused some church leaders in the country of aiding and abetting corruption.
The Serving Overseer of The Latter Rain Assembly also said some churches not only encourage and harbour corrupt individuals, but also receive ill-gotten money from them.
He said this while delivering a speech in preparation for the first anniversary of the Occupy Nigeria Protest in Lagos on Sunday.
He said, “The church has failed the nation. Worst oppression is going on in the churches today. Most churches encourage corrupt leaders by failing to tell them the truth and collecting their money.”
Speaking on the theme, ‘Corruption and the Soul of the Nation’, the lawyer regretted that corruption had robbed the country of the chance to realise its potential.
He said, “It cripples a nation’s character and drains her of substance. We are confronted daily with news and reports of executive corruption in high places, assaulted with a legal system that has long lost respect for the sacredness of justice.
“We have resorted to worshipping and preserving certain sacred cows and even their sires. We have a social system that makes a mockery of a country and her feeble efforts at self-reclamation to the end that even her entire existence becomes a running joke.
“This is not mere alarmism. Our country has long been distorted by corruption and it has progressively eroded her strength and undermined her potential.”
Bakare reiterated his call for the convening of a national conference, saying it would help solve some of the country’s socio-economic and political problems.
Recalling the protest against the fuel subsidy removal in January last year, the Congress for Progressive Change’s Vice-Presidential candidate for the 2011 presidential election said it was a collective resolve by Nigerians to fight against injustice and oppression.
He said, “The protest was unprecedented that Nigerians across the country, irrespective of religion and ethnic identification, resisted the subsidy removal on such a scale.
“From a little band of people who began to protest and clamour that Nigeria must be occupied, it steadily grew into a mammoth movement as each one told his neighbour that this was a chance to snatch our country back. While it lasted, people were energised. They wanted to question the answers they already had on the state of affairs in the country.”
CULLED FROM PUNCH NEWSPAPERS
January 14, 2013 by Simon Utebor
Written by NEWSTRAWL ONLINE UPDATE
Sodiq Oyeleke is a Media, Human Resources, Project Management and Public Relations Practitioner
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