Senior Pastor of the Citadel Global Community Church, Tunde Bakare, yesterday warned the Federal Government against making the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele a scapegoat over how he handled the country’s monetary policy.
Speaking during a State of the Nation broadcast at his church in Ikeja, Lagos, Bakare also warned against the ‘Emilokan’ kind of politics.
According to him, Emefiele couldn’t have acted without presidential authorization.
He said, “Mr Godwin Emefiele may have made the wrong judgement calls in the management of Nigeria’s monetary policy, but he must not be made a scapegoat. In the provisions of the central bank of Nigeria, CBN Act 2007, there is every possibility that the erstwhile central bank governor did not act without presidential authorization.
“If Emefiele is found liable for any crime, by all means, he should be prosecuted. However, considering the dynamics of the pre-election environment and the then-candidate Bola Tinubu’s public allegation that the naira redesign policy was targeted at him, the optics of the president targeting Emefiele for prosecution after winning the election and being sworn in as the president could be interpreted as a form of vendetta far beneath such a distinguished office.”
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Bakare said he had earlier warned that ’emilokan’ would breed an “imperial presidency”.
President Bola Tinubu made the famous “Emilokan (It is my turn)” speech on June 2, 2022, ahead of the 2023 election following a seeming lack of support from the then President and reported opposition by key members of the Presidency.
During his speech where he talked on many current national issues, the cleric said, “I’m reminded of the warning that I sounded to Nigerians in January 2023 in my address titled, ‘Bridging the gap between politics and governance.
“I warned that the politics of entitlement; the ’emilokan’ type of politics would breed an imperial presidency, one that would slide towards dictatorship and would be intolerant of dissent.”
