The Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (CGCC), Pastor Tunde Bakare, has opened on a seemingly widely accepted insinuation that late former President Muhammadu Buhari was a religious bigot.

He said the former Nigerian leader was far from being a religious fundamentalist, contrary to accusations.

Bakare said that most of Buhari’s domestic staff were Christians and that the former head of state never kept away from praying in the name of Jesus, as Christians do.

The senior pastor was the running mate to Buhari in the 2011 presidential election.

He told Channels Television, “I thought he was a religious fundamentalist until I came close.”

Bakare, who was one of the numerous politicians that bought the All Progressives Congress, APC, nomination form for the 2023 presidential election, added, “After the flag off of our campaign in Kaduna, we rode in the same car, we got home to his place and he staggered, the next word he spoke, God is my witness, was ‘Jesus Christ of Nazareth’.

“And I said, ‘General, what is that?’ He said, ‘You do not have the monopoly of Jesus Christ, I’m thanking God’.

“He just said that, and then I found out that his bodyguards were all Christians. Not only that, his driver of 10 years asked me to pray with him and I said, ‘I don’t pray Islamic prayers, and he said, ‘I’m a Christian, sir.’”

Former President Muhammadu Buhari was confirmed dead in London’s largest and most expensive private clinic on Sunday.

He was said to have passed on while receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness.

He will be buried in Daura, his home town in Katsina State, northwest Nigeria on Tuesday.

A delegation of top government officials are already in London to bring home his remains.