By Damola Emmanuel
- The Presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was born Babatunde Gbolahan Bakare on Thursday, November 11, 1954, at Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, Nigeria.
- Tunde Bakare was born a Muslim but got converted to Christianity in 1974.
- He attended the All Saints Primary School, Kemta, Abeokuta, and subsequently, Lisabi Grammar School, also in Abeokuta.
- He studied law at the University of Lagos between 1977 and 1980, and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1981.
- After completing his one-year mandatory National Youth Service Programme, he started his professional career with the Gani Fawehinmi Chambers, Rotimi Williams & Co, and Burke & Co, Solicitors. He established his own law firm, Tunde Bakare & Co (El-Shaddai Chambers), in October 1984.
- At the peak of his legal career in May 1988, he was called into the gospel ministry of Jesus Christ and, on April 1, 1989, he founded The Latter Rain Assembly (End-Time Church). The church is now known as The Citadel Global Community Church (CGCC) and he currently serves as the Serving Overseer of the church.
- Bakare also presides over the Global Apostolic Impact Network (GAIN) – a network of churches, ministries and kingdom businesses committed to advancing the Kingdom of God on earth.
- Unknown to many, just as he is superbly successful in ministry, Bakare is also an accomplished business man. Together with some compatriots, he has built enduring businesses across diverse sectors including manufacturing and aviation.
- He has, over the years, been using his personal resources, expertise as a lawyer, wide networks and various platforms like the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, to mediate in several interethnic and communal clashes in some of Nigeria’s conflict hotbeds. Born in 2010, the SNG is a coalition of progressive political society, organizations and individuals noted for engendering significant political shifts.
- Though he is a man of uncommon accomplishments, though he flies high like King Midas, with everything he touches turning gold, he is as humble as they come. He is comfortable with every stratum of society, relating not only to the high and mighty in society but also very comfortable in the lowly company of a “nine-year-old walking to and from the public tap every day to fetch sixty-four pails of water to make ends meet.”
- He belongs to the club of indigent young Nigerians who were not only the first in their families to attend university but also had to toil day and night to sponsor themselves through college.
- He deliberately chose the death-day of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo to declare his presidential ambition as a befitting tribute to the memory of a legend whose inclusive free education policy as Premier of the Old Western Region gave him a head start life despite abject poverty.
- At the peak of the constitutional crisis engendered by the ill-health of the late President Shehu Musa Yar’Adua in 2010, Bakare deployed his Save Nigeria Group (SNG) to press for the installation of then acting President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as the substantive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He also used his platform to provide President Jonathan the framework to “Save and Transform Nigeria.”
- Dr Tunde Bakare was the running mate to the then General Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 presidential elections on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, during which he designed a framework to rebuild Nigeria and make Nigeria work for every Nigerian. The framework would later form the bedrock for the manifesto of APC.
- In 2007, Dr. Bakare founded the International Centre for Reconstruction and Development (ICRD), a not-for-profit research-led propositional platform committed to the transformation of Africa.
- Bakare holds a Law degree from the University of Lagos (UNILAG), and a 1996 Doctor of Ministry (honoris causa) from Indiana Christian University under the leadership of his mentor, Dr. Lester Sumrall, in recognition of his global reach and impact.
- He has been married to Pastor Mrs. ‘Layide Bakare, who he fondly calls ‘Mrs. B’, with who he sired five God-fearing children.
