Pastor Tunde Bakare, the presiding overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church, has denounced ’emi lo kan’ politics and characterised its practitioners as intolerable.
In his speech on Sunday at his church auditorium in Ikeja, Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, Bakare referred to politics of division, deception, manipulation, commerce, exploitation, betrayal, defamation, intimidation, elimination, and entitlement as terrible types of politics.
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Bakare, who was also a 2023 presidential aspirant under the banner of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), further elaborated on the politics of entitlement by claiming that ’emi lo kan’ politics only serves to fulfil long-held personal desires.
Says Bakare, “This ’emi lo kan’ politics that insists on one’s turn, even if circumstances do not align, is bad. Politics of entitlement also manifests as perennial candidacy, not with the intent to serve, but to gratify long time personal ambitions.
“It could also manifest as insistence on a given political office as a reward for what one considers a lifetime of sacrifice to the nation. Politicians with a sense of entitlement evade political debates; they do not consider it imperative to communicate with the electorate.
“Entitlement politics will breed an imperial presidency that is distant from the people and has no sense of responsibility or accountability to the people. Such imperial governance will slide towards dictatorship and will be intolerant of dissent.
“Entitlement politicians set low performance benchmarks for themselves when they secure power and are content with projecting molehills as mountains of achievement.”