Anambra lawmaker chides Pastor Bakare over comment against Igbo tribe

The Anambra State lawmaker, representing Njikoka 1 constituency, Timothy Ifedioramma has launched a scathing attack on Pastor Tunde Bakare over his recent comment that Igbo nation is cursed.

Bakare is the General Overseer of The Citadel Global Community Church and was reported to have said that Igbo were cursed by the first Prime Minister of Nigeria, the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.

But Ifedioramma, on Thursday described the comment as an aberation and disappointing, saying Bakare was the one cursed as a pastor.

He said Balewa never made such statement on the Igbo, nor killed by the Igbo, insisting that the cleric’s narratives were historically wrong and politically motivated.

He added that he would have ignored the comment but for the naive and uninformed Nigerians who might likely believe him in view of his religious status.

He said, “It’s a total disappointment that the statement will be coming from Bakare, my friend and a man we at some point respected to be a man of God, one who had been an advocate of justice.

“That statement credited to him is an aberation and a very big minus for him as a person. If it actually came from him, I’ll want to revert to him, that he’s the one cursed and not the Igbo nation because the Igbo nation cannot be cursed.

“That his assertion is historically and politically wrong because that wasn’t what transpired. He should have a fact check on what he said, unless he would claim to be misquoted. But it was his words, I’ll give it back to him that he’s the one cursed. We can’t be cursed, we’re blessed generation and people.

“For the fact that we had an amalgamation or what I’ll call false marriage of 1914 that led to Nigeria being a nation should not make anyone look at any particular tribe, how much more an igbo tribe to be a lesser partner in the commity of nations, how much more a race that’s cursed.

“We totally take exception to that. Both the clergy and politicians in the Eastern region are adversed to that very assertion and we reject it in its entirety.

“The truth of the matter is that Tafawa Balewa never made such statement. An igbo man never killed Balewa. All those nasty things he was putting across that he so said story were all politically