By Steve Osuji
▪︎As Bakare declares to run for president, could it be he couldn’t break the IGBO CURSE?
On the 31st of March, Pastor Tunde Bakare ( whom I no longer remember the name of his movement-cum church) delivered his now infamous and disguised hate preachment against Ndigbo.
He said to his gullible congregation that the entire Ndigbo nation were under a curse since 1966. A so-called curse that has subsisted for all of 56 years. According to him, in the final moments when some of the Five Majors who plotted the 1966 coup were about to kill PM Tafawa Balewa, he had looked his assailants in the face and told them their tribe would never be president.
But this is a pastor’s smart fabrication as there’s still no agreement as to the circumstance of death of the PM. Who pulled the trigger and whether indeed he died by the bullet remain matters of speculation and conjecture. Nobody is sure. Not the least Bakare. Yet he spoke with dubious authority as if he was a fly on the wall in Balewa’s lodge.
Pastor Bakare sure knows how to choose word and his timing: now, at the peak of politicking and jostle by every zone to be heard, Pastor Bakare tells the world why Igbo cannot be president; how they had defiled the Hausa-Fulani and therefore must pay for it even 56 years after. But not to worry, he, Bakare, has supernatural powers to mitigate the Balewa curse. He and his congregation prayed with fervour… and as the good book promises, whatever is loosed on earth, is loosed in heaven.
Well, his congregation may have been suckered but not this column. We saw through the tricks and devious machinations of this ‘great’ pastor. We said that Pastor Bakare was on the soapbox making his political pitch; demarketing Igbo and pouring hot coal on Igbo quest for the diadem.
We said so but his media hawks had called us names. What do they say now that pastor has shown his hand? He too wants to be president!
Ten days after, Pastor Bakare has declared for president. Is it that the Igbo curse couldn’t be reversed? Is it that he can’t wait to find out the efficacy of his supplication on behalf of his BELOVED Ndigbo? Or there was no curse afterall?
But here lies the dubeity of Pastor Bakare’s Igbo curse theory. He had always known he would run for president. He had long predicted that President Muhammadu Buhari would hand over to him. He’s NUMBER 16, he had eulogised himself. How then would you canvass Igbo presidency if God had anointed you president?
With Bakare declaring, it has now been made very clear to those who pretend they couldn’t decode his game. With the campaign to zone the presidency to the south gaining traction, rubbishing Igbo before the north and blocking their chances is Bakare’s strategy to grab the presidency.
Who says Igbo can’t be president? He had asked his congregation rhetorically? But the answer is: nobody has said so apart from Bakare himself. Igbo seems to be the major obstacle to his bid and he conjures a devious plan to kill any Igbo ambition at the fetal stage.
But Igbo holds ofo na ogu; Igbo society is founded on justice, equity and fair. Her well known ethos had always been: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch. Let his wings break who seeks to unperch the other.
We say tread softly Pastor Bakare, lest your wings fail you!
▪︎ Osuji is a newspaper columnist and public affairs analyst.