Reported by: Oahimire Omone Precious | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
A former President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, has urged President Bola Tinubu not to seek re-election in 2027, declaring that the administration has failed Nigerians and done more harm to the nation than any government in its history. The cleric, who spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday, June 22, 2026, said the Tinubu administration has moved the country backwards and should make way for more competent leadership.
Oritsejafor, who also served as National President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, did not mince words in his assessment of the President’s three years in office. “The government of Mr President has done more harm to this nation than this nation has ever experienced,” he said. “When you look at the condition of this nation today, instead of going forward, we seem to be going backwards. Instead of solving our problems, we seem to be creating more problems.”
While declining to directly call for Tinubu’s immediate resignation, the cleric urged the President to honestly assess his capacity to address the country’s mounting challenges. “I would not sit here categorically and tell him, resign,” Oritsejafor said. “But I think what I would say to him is: look, don’t pretend to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. Don’t pretend that you can take Nigeria out of where it is now when you know you can’t, and then begin to plan to come back.”
The clergyman also dismissed the administration’s “Renewed Hope” slogan, arguing that hope cannot be renewed when it has never existed. “In one of the programmes I did, I mentioned and said, look, I heard people saying renewed hope. You must have hope first before you renew it. An average Nigerian today has no hope, except you say you look up to God to give you hope,” he said.
Oritsejafor, who had previously warned Nigerians ahead of the 2015 general election that the Buhari administration would fail, said he was compelled to break his relative silence on political issues because the situation had become unbearable. “In 2014, I tried to warn this nation of the direction it was going, when the Buhari government was getting ready to come in, I knew that it was going to be a mess,” he recalled. “From there, I don’t know what to call where we are now, but it has grown worse. It has got to a point where I feel I must begin to say something, because I pastor people; they are human beings, they are Nigerians, and we must begin to hold people accountable for what’s happening.”
When asked about the All Progressives Congress’s recent electoral victories, including the re-election of Governor Biodun Oyebanji in Ekiti State, Oritsejafor dismissed the results as “fake” and described Nigeria’s electoral process as “selection” rather than election. “The truth is that elections in Nigeria are not free and fair. I will call them fake elections. In fact, I will even go as far as calling it selection, not election, because when you look at the whole setup, the way everything is put together, beginning with the INEC chairman down to those at the wards and everything else, you will see that it is structured in such a way as to fail,” he said. “The vote of the average Nigerian doesn’t count because they already know and have figured out exactly what they are going to do. They know whom they want to win.”
The cleric concluded with a direct message to the President: “If I meet with him today, I would say to him, Mr President, you have failed. You have not done well at all. So right now, do what you know you must do — either step aside, do not stand for another election, or look for people who have the capacity to bring change to Nigeria.”
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