Veteran journalist and publisher of Ovation Magazine, Dele Momodu played a crucial role in reconciling late Afenifere leader, Pa Ayo Adebanjo and founder of Citadel Global Community Church, Pastor Tunde Bakare weeks before Adebanjo’s death.
Credible sources informed TheScrutinyNG that Momodu facilitated the meeting in July 2024 when the late Adebanjo who died on Friday February 14 at the age of 96 was very indisposed and had told many he was “at the departure lounge”.
The relationship between Pastor Bakare and Pa Adebanjo broke down in 2020 over issues relating to the 2023 presidential election which was won by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
In the build-up to the election, the late Adebanjo, who believed that it is the turn of the Igbos to to produce Nigeria’s president in the spirit of justice, fairness and equity had publicly supported Peter Obi, then presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP).
Many Yoruba elders, especially from Lagos had berated Pa Adebanjo for not supporting a fellow Yoruba for the presidency but he stood his ground and campaigned for Obi throughout the election.
It would be recalled that Bakare, in December 2020, had delivered a homily in his church, where he hit at some Yoruba leaders he described as “rancorous elements” who are in the habit of querying Tinubu’s ancestry.
In the 11-minute video, Bakare said, “I have a word for those Yoruba rancorous elements, noisemakers who had not achieved as much as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had achieved, but they are always querying and worrying themselves about his ancestry.”
According to Bakare, the victory of the APC in 2015 and 2019 would have been impossible if not for the “cooperation and political dexterity” of Asiwaju.
“He (Tinubu) delivered Lagos State and nearly all the South West states from the onslaught of the PDP from 1999 to 2007,” he stressed, adding, “I am not sure many of his traducers would have survived if they had gone through the vicissitudes of life that Asiwaju Tinubu went through.”
The Afenifere leader, at the time, was said to have been exasperated with the remarks attributed to Pastor Bakare.
In an article titled ‘Abuse of pulpit for political purpose’, the late National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin who died on April 3 2021 wrote “Chief Ayo Adebanjo was practically in tears as he called me on Thursday to ask if I came across a political address given by Pastor Tunde Bakare on Sunday. I could not lie to a 92-year-old man and I admitted I saw it. He then asked why I didn’t let him have it as it took another person to forward it to him”.
“I felt so bad at the charge but had a good reason of not wanting to put an old man through the torture of such a dagger from a supposed trusted friend. I knew he would get to know of the unveiled unwarranted attack on him in the orchestrated video, but it didn’t have to be through me if I could avoid it. The devastation he went through is the reason why I have decided to do this piece as part of the healing process for the old man who was badly hit in a very crude manner”.
In his response Pastor Bakare wrote “Good morning Yinka. Hope you are much better. I have just read Femi Fani-Kayode’s piece where he quoted you and others. As he described you affectionately as his brother in the piece, I believe you are either companions or must be in the same league or camp. have only one appeal to make through you to him: Tell him to expose my supposed “ugly past of 1990″ he must know about and the shady deals involving some bank that just changed hands that involved me in any shape or manner.”
Sources said the relationship between Pastor Bakare and Odumakin was “not that smooth again” until Odumakin passed on in April 2021.
However, Bakare was able to reconcile with the late elder statesman before his passage.
