Fiery cleric and political activist, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has drawn the battle-line with Africa Independent Television (AIT) for reporting that he disowned media reports on his controversial sermon of last Sunday in which he predicted that President Goodluck Jonathan would not serve out his term, which expires in 2015.

As reported yesterday by Transport & Business Express, AIT had claimed that Bakare told the State Security Service (SSS) while being interrogated on Monday that he had been misquoted by the media.

Describing the report as false, Bakare, who is the Serving Overseer of Latter Rain Assembly, Lagos, yesterday gave AIT 48 hours to retract and apologise for the report or prepare to meet him in court.

A letter sent to AIT management by Bakare’s solicitors, Tope Adebayo and Flora Ogbuitepu, said in part: “Consequent upon your broadcast, our client’s character and hard-won reputation has been battered coupled with the massive erosion of the confidence and wide acceptability he enjoys all over the world. Our client has instructed us to demand and we hereby demand the followings:

“1. A retraction of the defamatory statement and an apology to be broadcasted in your daily news broadcast and the “Focus Nigeria” programme.

“TAKE NOTICE that in the event that you fail, neglect or refuse to comply with the above demand within 48 hours (two days) of receipt of this letter, we will have no alternative but to explore the attendant instruction of our client to immediately commence legal action against you for defamation, without further recourse to you.”

Transport & Business Express recalls that Pastor Bakare in a sermon entitled “How to change government peacefully and make society better,” advised President Jonathan to “choose between the options to resign, be impeached or worst still face people’s revolt.” He was quizzed the next day at the Shangisha Lagos office of the SSS.

Vice presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in last year’s general elections, Bakare is also the Convener of the Save Nigeria Group (SNG) which organised the “Occupy Nigeria” fuel protests that crippled much of the country last January.