Pastors' Opulent Lifestyle Might be Responsible for Call to Tax Religious Organisations – Bakare

Pastor Tunde Bakare

The founder of the Latter Rain Assembly and convener of the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), Pastor Tunde Bakare, has called for clergymen and clerics who live ostentatious lifestyles to be investigated and those found guilty to be brought to book in order for all sections of Nigeria to be sanitised.

Pastor Bakare made this call while speaking with the Nigerian Tribune in his reaction to calls in certain quarters that religious organisations in the country should be made to pay taxes. According to him, asking whether religious organisations, especially churches and mosques, should pay taxes is synonymous with chasing shadows at the expense of the substance.
A former vice-presidential candidate on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Bakare also insisted that he had no problem whether religious organisations were made to pay taxes or not, but argued that it was not uncommon for charitable organisations as well as religious centres to be excluded from taxes in other parts of the world. He said the recent calls might not be unconnected with the ostentatious lifestyles of some clerics in the country.