El-Rufai visits Bakare in church — a week after ‘presidential declaration’

Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna state, visited Tunde Bakare, serving overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly, at the church auditorium in Lagos on Sunday.

This visit is coming one week after the fiery preacher declared his intention to become the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not stating when exactly he would run for office.

El-Rufai, who was one of the persons who pleaded with the pastor to run alongside President Muhammadu Buhari in 2011, came into the church auditorium on Sunday afternoon, while Bakare was preaching.

The pastor welcomed the governor with a hug, and said: “I have missed you… it is a good time to come”.

Bakare had said earlier in the service that all those putting up deliberate sinful silence (DSS) about the killings in Benue would pay for it.

“We cannot keep quiet while hardened murderers and criminals fill our land with the crimes of blood. That would be DSS… deliberate sinful silence, and i think secret service is guilty of that,” he said

“The brutal murder going on in Benue state and other parts of Nigeria is very attrocious and wicked. There will be consequences of this dastard murder. Every one involved in one way or the other, either overtly or covertly, shall pay for it”

Neither Bakare nor el-Rufai disclosed the reason for the governor’s visit. This is not the first time el-Rufai will be paying such visit to Bakare’s church.

Bakare, el-Rufai and Buhari were key members of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a party founded by the retired general to run his presidential campaign in 2011.