Pastor TUNDE BAKARE
Pastor Tunde Bakare is one of Nigeria’s most respected and influential pastors. A trained lawyer and an incredibly eloquent man of God, he cut a large chunk of his pastorial teeth under the tutelage of Pastor William Folorunsho Kumuyi, the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church. He later left the Deeper Life ministry and joined the Redeemed Christian Church of God and again left the church afterwards to start his own ministry, the Latter Rain Assembly. The highly influential man of God was also a one-time vice presidential candidate to Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari during one of his failed presidential bids. Today, he is the founder and Head Pastor of Citadel Global Community Church, formerly Latter Rain Assembly. He commands a lot of following even outside of his church owing to his critical views of government, particularly the previous administrations. Pastor Tunde Bakare is a man whose love for our nation and its unity is undeniable. His passion and commitment to the Nigerian project and desire to see it prosper and become great again can only be matched by only a very few Nigerians, dead or living. Indeed, it is believed that only two subjects can evoke greater passion in Pastor Bakare – his love for God and his wife, Olayide and children. He loves and adores his wife to bits. Within just a few days of worshipping at the Latter Rain Assembly, as a new comer, one of the first things you’ll find out is Pastor Bakare’s love for his wife who’s fondly called Mrs. ‘B’ by members of his church, an alias we learnt was given to her by her husband. He talks about her in glowing terms a lot of times. Recently, at an event, the highly revered man of God went down memory lane and recalled how his father-in-law endorsed him as his daughter’s future husband even before they began dating.
It was a few years before they got married. Pastor Tunde Bakare had gone to the bank to do some transactions. He had some foreign currencies in his possession that he wanted to change to the naira. The transaction was taking way too long for him and he had a flight to catch to Port- Harcourt for an urgent assignment that same day. He couldn’t wait anymore. He left the bank with an arrangement with the lady who was attending to him that he would be back the next day to pick up his money and conclude his transaction. It turned out he couldn’t make it back to Lagos until evening the following day. By the time he got to the bank that evening the lady had closed but she left a note for him and her address to come pick up his money if he couldn’t to see her at work the following week.
“Early the following morning, I set out for her house,” he narrated. The place was somewhere in Ikoyi, and I wasn’t quite familiar with the area, but I had to find it,” he’d narrated gleefully, a proud smile adorning his bespectacled face. “It was important I pick up the money as quickly as possible, it was meant for the burial of a close friend’s father and had to be given to him that same day,” he’d continued. “Anyway, finally, I located the house in Ikoyi. It was a big house. I reached for the doorbell and pressed it. About a minute later, a six footer man appeared at the gate and asked: “what do you want?” I immediately told him I don’t want anything but that he should call me Miss Layide, that there’s something I need to pick up from her. He sized me up for another few seconds before going back inside. A couple of minutes after, he reappeared and said I could come in.”
When Pastor Bakare got into the house, he met Olayide’s father in the living room and greeted him. Miss Olayide later emerged from her room and handed over his money to him. “I will always recommend that the best time to know the real beauty of the woman you want to date or marry as the case maybe is early in the morning when she’s just getting out of bed without the ‘mascara’ and the ‘cascara’on her face. Layide glowed radiantly and looked very beautiful even without the faintest make-up,” Pastor Bakare said proudly about his wife’s natural beauty. Within minutes, he concluded his visit and bade farewell to father and daughter. After he left, the father asked his daughter who the young man who just left was. Miss Olayide told him she was only meeting him for the second time, that he’d only come to conclude a transaction with him. And the father told her in very clear words: “that is your husband!” That man would later become his father-in-law a few years after. He would also later learn that he was the first man the father would allow to come in and see the daughter.
“To be honest, I sincerely had no ulterior motives then,” he told the congregation. “I didn’t go to her house with any intention in mind then, God sees my heart and my wife knows it too. All I wanted was to just go there and pick the money,” Pastor Bakare stressed emphatically. But unknown to him, his ‘would be’ father-in-law, apparently could see into their future and knew things he (Pastor Bakare) didn’t know about both of them at the time. And the rest, like they say, is history. And today, to the glory of God, like the man of God would always tell anyone, theirs has been a beautiful union ever since. Their 39 year marriage has been a model for all young people and even the older generation for it’s been nothing but absolute bliss for them. Theirs has been such a wonderful story that even his father-in-law had to confess years after their marriage that the best thing that ever happened to him was giving his daughter to Pastor Tunde Bakare. Indeed, there’s no bigger testament of their incredibly blessed marriage than this. Today, their marriage is almost 40 years old and they are blessed with two girls and three boys.
– WALE LAWAL
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