Founder and General Overseer of Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has denied ever saying that President Muhammadu Buhari has failed Nigerians.
Bakare had in an Instagram live interview with the Publisher of Ovation Magazine, Dele Momodu, on Tuesday, reportedly said the President had disappointed Nigerians.
But speaking on Arise TV on Thursday, the clergyman dismissed the reports, noting that media outlets quoted him wrongly.
He said, “The truth of the matter is, that was an instagram live interview that lasted for over 2 hours and the audio and the video will be available, I’m sure the publisher of Ovation Media, Bashorun Dele Momodu, can make that available to the public. Those headlines in the newspapers were the creation of the newspapers themselves, those were not the exact words I used. I said, if I remember correctly, that the coming of President Buhari into power in 2015 was a breath of fresh air to so many people.
“But in the midst of all competing demands, the conflicts and everything that happened, the expectations they had; not all of them would have been met. And, therefore, Nigerians are entitled to say they are disappointed.
“I did not use the words ‘Buhari has disappointed Nigerians’. I will not ask the papers not to sell their papers using any headline. Sometimes they make their own deduction from what was spoken but those words were not exactly or expressly spoken by me.
“I choose to be moderate in all that I say. Except I have concrete facts, I do not just talk. But are Nigerians disappointed? It’s everywhere, every day. You see it in the news. When expectations are not met, people will express their frustrations. It is natural and normal.
“But that does not mean this administration has not done anything good at all and, therefore, should be consigned to the dustbin of history as a big disappointment. These were not my words, those were what the papers chose to use.”