Nigeria’s Democracy Under President Tinubu Faces Existential Threat – Tunde Bakare Warns

Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (CGCC), Pastor Tunde Bakare has declared that the institution of legislative oversight in the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is fast collapsing, just as the nation’s democracy is faced with an existential threat.

Pastor Bakare noted that through its actions and inactions, the National Assembly has, in effect, become the 48th member of President Tinubu’s cabinet, while a minister has, more or less, become a third-term state governor in Rivers State pampered by the indulgences of the president.

He said if state capture was what President Tinubu meant by ‘emi lo kan’, it would surely turn out to be anti-climax that would eventually be counterproductive at the end.

He therefore urged Tinubu to think deeply and reflect on the fact that; ‘No man is wise enough nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.’

Pastor Bakare, a former presidential aspirant in 2022 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), also raised alarm over the state of affairs in the country, stressing that Nigeria is steering in the wrong direction.

Bakare in his Easter State of the Nation address, delivered at the Lagos auditorium of CGCC on Sunday, April 20, 2025, particularly decried the relationship between the legislative and executive arms of government under President Bola Tinubu, and challenged the Nigerian leader to “stop playing God”.

In the words of Bakare; “To the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, under whose brand of politics the institution of legislative oversight is collapsing and our democracy is faced with an existential threat, I say: Mr. President, Nigeria is too delicate for this kind of politics.

“Please, stop playing God! Mr. President, it is through your influence that the Nigerian National Assembly has become a haven for legislative rascality,” he insisted.

Taking a critical look at some of the recent activities of the National Assembly, including the approval of a state of emergency in Rivers, the suspension of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, Bakare said the country’s legislative arm of government is now “an extension of the executive, grossly violating the principles of separation of powers, and rubber-stamping the whims and caprices of” President Tinubu’s office.

He said; “This National Assembly, the 10th, has by its unconstitutional endorsement of the President’s abuse of powers proven to be the most spineless in our recent history”.