That experience really has brought about a new me. It has re-launched
me into a new realm of discoveries. I
will also say that it has confirmed me as a transitional leader. I have always
known that a life with no impact in of no value. I went into that journey, to
be isolated so that I can be elevated. Through that experience, I got to know
many things I probably never wouldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have been able to
set some people who are rotting away in the maximum prison unjustly, free. It
was like a journey that was set up on purpose. Since my time there, till now,
we have helped some of these inmates by getting them lawyers and to the glory
of God, they are free today. I am talking about people who have spent ten years
at least in custody. I have also organized support for some of these guys by
setting up businesses and getting them apartments to settle down to their new
lives. We took care of the medical needs of some inmates and through some other
interventions, I was able to create a new perception about life in the minds of
these people (including an inmate on death row, who we funded the surgery on a
leg problem for over ten years). I was able to encourage them to see beyond
what they are currently going through. From that experience also, I have been
made to realize that it is not everyone that comes into life that is there to
bless you. Some truly come into our lives to bless it, while some are like
clouds that need to clear off with time, and when they disappear, you will see
more of yourself. It is at that point you realize that some people have to step
out of your life, for God to step in. I have been made to realize what betrayal
truly means. Then I learnt about forgiveness, which is a major thing needed and
really missing in our lives. To forgive requires a strong heart. Forgiveness is
a strength, not a weakness.
So, are you saying
you have forgiven those you know were behind your ordeal?
Yes! Yes because they have assisted me in discovering myself
the more. They have made me to realize the new person I have become, that it is
a new season for me and they have made me become more optimistic about my life
as a game-changer, line-crosser and protocol-breaker. I even have to appreciate
them for the mockery that God used for my making. Genuinely, I just have to
forgive and focus on the next level of my life.
At the point when the
cloud was gathering till the point you were sentenced, did you have the fear
that all you have been building over the years through your church were about
crashing?
No. Not at all. I never had any fear about the ministry. I
knew I was not the one that built the ministry to this level, it is God. And I
know that nothing built of God can crash. I concluded already that if I cannot
handle it, God can. Whatever I cannot handle, I hand it over to God. God is the commander-in-chief, so if He sends
me on an errand, I don’t have an option. I knew God was sending me somewhere
and I was sure the mission would never fail because I have never being doing
anything extraordinary; no privacy, no special rooms for prayers, no special
alters, no secrets. It is God who has been doing all. I knew from the onset
that I would get to my destination because my history is smaller than my
destiny. So, I never saw the ministry collapsing at all. Rather than
collapsing, God has doubled our double and we have moved from glory to glory.
However, all that has happened cannot change me from being who I am, because
never will I allow bad people or situations change me from being and doing
good.
Was there time during
your travails that you got to the point of giving up?
Maybe.
This is Nigeria, it’s
never a good experience inside the correctional facilities..
Maybe yes. There are times and situations that, before
someone or something breaks your heart, you would have broken your own heart by
yourself. I have not been getting ready, I have been living ready. I live ready
because Romans 8:28 says ‘everything works together for good for them that love
God and those that are called according to His purpose’. You don’t need to be
an elephant to be relevant. I have got so many quotes that are like life
guidelines for me. So, while in there I got the strength and inspiration to
write two books; From Wilderness To Wonders, and Revelations From Isolation:
Opportunities In My Captivity. But it was shaky though, considering my mum, my
daughter, and considering myself because I kept asking myself why? Because I
didn’t do this! I had tried long before now to see how this could have been
resolved. It got a point that I was asking myself that is it bad to be truthful
or honest in this world? This whole scenario was just a relationship thing and
I never denied having anything to do with the person. There was nothing like
duping her. There was no proper investigation, no police investigation, there
was no evidence against me to confirm such. But however, I am not going to
blame the judge, I don’t blame the prosecutor, and neither will I blame the
person involved or God. But I thank them all for helping me to complete the
assignment God has put before me. I believe before I was taking to the maximum
prison, some people inside must have been praying to God to send them a savior.
If I had not been sent there, they may not have met that savior. In all, I feel
fulfilled because I was able to run the errand God has sent me and He has been
compensating with special gifts for what I went through. Life is not all about
funfair, it is about warfare. I have since come to realize that if you are
doing something differently, you don’t expect people to love you. If you want
to stand out, you should expect that some people will definitely stand against
you. And I have been standing out all the time because my crown is not in the
crowd. So, instead of blaming anyone involved in me going through that
experience, I am appreciating God for everything. For instance, we will be
visiting the prison again next week to relate with inmates and make donations.
To the Glory of God, the Pastor in the prison and the Imam have been on pay
roll for some time now. These are things just to encourage people. I joined
Muslim inmates at their Jumat prayers on Fridays. It was just few days to my
leaving the prison that the last Ramadan All these is to show that it is not
just about the circumstances you find yourself in, it is your reactions to them
that really matter. When you see opportunity in what you are going through, you
will ignore the calamity, and when you create something from that calamity, you
become a celebrity. I am already set to release a movie about my ordeals and I
know even my enemies will look forward to seeing the movie. I hope to tell the
true story in the movie. This was just a relationship matter. If the judge has
offered me the choice to pay the lady, even if I don’t have, I can’t even
imagine the number of people that will offer top pay immediately. I was told to
do plea bargaining which I refused because there was no case in all these
things in the first place. And that is why we appealed the judgement
immediately and I am so confident that God will manifest Himself when the
appellate court rules on the case. By and large, I am not going to hold on to
the past. I have dumped everything that happened in the past. All I am focused
on now is how to move on better in life, break new grounds. I see all I went
through as a blessing, this is a new season of my life and I have to keep moving.
You would have felt
betrayal from some people over that experience?
Definitely. I actually felt at a point, but ultimately, I
learnt some lessons that I am also going to teach people. Sometimes, we make
the mistake of looking up to some people, when actually we are meant to look
unto God. The experience taught me more about this. There were some people that
stepped out, they shocked me! These are big people that I was loyal to, that I
was serving. It was not even that I was looking for them to help me, but they
already concluded that I was going to be swallowed by the situation. These are
people that I was calling Papa, Mama; that I was celebrating always. They
didn’t want to identify with me at the dark hour, thinking that was the end.
But maybe God had led them to do that so they won’t have to claim glory over me
in the future by saying things like I did this for him, I called the Governor
on his behalf, because these are things they can actually do because I had
earlier mentioned the case to some of them. All I went through was a
well-arranged idea plotted to swallow me, not knowing that it will bounce me
forward. Falling is an accident, but staying further on the floor is a choice. Yes,
the experience was painful. I broke down many times, I could not sleep for
days. In fact, on the fourth day my heart was filled with suicidal thoughts.
You can imagine, I was sentenced on my daughter’s birthday.
You said the whole
thing was well-arranged, how did you come to this conclusion?
On that day, journalists are already on ground before anyone
arrived, just like they had been informed that I was going to be sentenced. The
judge only told my lawyer to inform me to come the next day. The date for
judgement was never communicated to me or my lawyer, we got there only to find
out that the judge was to read out a prepared ruling. I never had an idea of
what was coming. My daughter’s birthday was the next day, Church harvest was
few days away, my wife and I had our birthday coming and Christmas was around
the corner. I already had plans for all of these, never thought I would be
spending the period inside a prison. But to the glory of God, I think because
of the popularity of the story that time, some people withdrew themselves from
identifying with me, basically because they didn’t want their image to be
soiled. Meanwhile, I am grateful to God because in my entire life, I have never
been a stain on anyone. I am someone genuine people will be proud of. I am
someone who is loyal and will always be loyal to people. I believe also that
God intentionally did not allow these people to come to my assistance at that
period, because something else might have happened. I might have been saved
from sudden death or something evil. Who knows, maybe the judge didn’t really
want me to go to prison, I could have been fined and told to settle the
plaintiff. But God allowed it. He set me up for a purpose. Because all the
twelve years that we had been on the issue, sentencing me to prison never
occurred once. Why that long delay? I thought they were looking for a place to
hook me, but they couldn’t find one easily. The money involved in this case
initially was N2.8 million, I didn’t know how it became about N12 million. So,
it is really nobody’s fault, and I wouldn’t blame myself either.
So how did you adapt
to living inside the prison for several weeks?
I was not sleeping at nights for months. I can count the
number of hours I slept throughout the four months I was there. I was just
spending most of my times writing and praying. My heart was full of many
things. I got a lot of revelations in my incarceration. I was receiving some
bad news in there as well. I was betrayed by some of my ministers, all these
added to the heaviness of the heart that resulted to sleeplessness. It maybe
that they were childish or not strong enough for the weather, but I thank God
for my wife who stood by me all through. I thought she would be shaken, but she
never was.
But how did the issue
degenerated for so long without you finding ways of resolving it?
Like I said, I never denied having anything to do with the
lady. It was a basically a case relationship-gone-sour. From the beginning I
had be plain with the truth. I would not have had any reasons to deny this
person, because I met her when I was nobody. I still pray for her up till now,
and I will not stop doing so. The Genesis that people know today started from
her support and encouragement for me in those days. She was the one that gave
me N1 million that I deposited to acquire the land on which this church is
built today. That was about twenty years ago.
How did things actually
go wrong between you?
It was a relationship that was never to be in the first
place, but things do happen in life for a purpose. The relationship wouldn’t
have led anywhere because I later discovered that she was married in the UK. I
had never traveled outside Nigeria then. But you know as young men, you try to
pull yourself up in life and that was how I got involved with her. The
relationship lasted about four years, she used to come to Nigeria and we were
even talking about getting married. But as God will have it, we were never to
be. Because if it was God’s will, we would have been together till now. So,
like most of the stories of love-gone-sour, problems started after I got
married in 2007. We parted ways finally in 2006. People come into our lives for
different reasons, and that was why I appreciated God after she was through
with her assignment in my life then. It was after my wedding that I started
receiving petitions that I hypnotized her, that I duped her and all that. You
can imagine, the land that she was saying I didn’t buy then is there as we
speak. That plot of land I bought then at N1.4 million is now sold for N9
million. I didn’t sell it. I am saying all these because there are some people
I must not disappoint. I also but
another three plots at N500,000 each then, which I handed over to her because
she gave me the power of attorney. And those are the things I thought the
church would have seen and said, haba, it was glaring. Because she denied that
we never had anything. I brought all these evidence before them. Those plots are
now sold for N12 million each. If I actually wanted to dupe her, why haven’t I
sold them all for good money? Should that not simply have made her say oh, let
me remember this guy’s kindness from the past? I handed everything to her. The
police exonerated me, FCID Alagbon exonerated me. They confirmed that all she
was trying to build against me was out of vendetta. But I wouldn't know; this
is Nigeria where someone can talk to someone in position of power that I have a
case, I want someone to suffer, and it will happen. I am not saying that was
what happened, but I feel so pained. And that is why I can never fight for
Nigeria. No one can fight for Nigeria. And I will say it again, if you really
want to enjoy your life, don't think about fighting for Nigeria. Because the
people you are trying to fight for are the ones that will sell you out. So, if
I had wanted to be a criminal, I could have sold those the properties for over
N40 million and say yes, you said I took your N12 million, please have it. If
you check the list of things she calculated to arrive at that amount, you will
be shocked. Things like I bought him suits, I bought him this and that, I paid
his medical bills and all those funny things. Please in all of these, where did
I dupe her? I didn't say come and do business, come and do ritual or anything
extraordinary. At a point in the beginning of the case, police officers who
interrogated me were like, can't I even deny those things she said, I told them
I couldn't because this is someone who was there for me when I was nobody. And
that is a great lesson which I will always want people to learn. You need to be
careful the kind of midwives you allow in your life. Some people are just up to
help you only to hurt you in the end.
A popular publication
reported that a particular society Lady, Nike Bush was actually the one behind
this ordeal you went through, that she only seized the opportunity of the
problem between you and your ex to settle a big score with you. How true is
this?
That's a lie! One thing about me is that even if I have a
problem with you, I will never bear false witness against such person. There is
nothing to convince me that she did anything of such. All I know is that we
used to be friends at a time and I couldn't recollect us having any serious
issue. Truth is I never even got to read the story you are referring too. Although
sometimes in the past, she told me she had a sister that works in the ministry
of justice, but I never asked her to help me talk to anyone. But this is Lagos,
those who control the state know how they do things together. Perhaps if for
any reason however that she knew anything about what happened, I will also like
to appreciate her for being used to fulfill a purpose. Considering the
compensation that followed that frustration, I cannot but thank her (if so) for
her role in my testimony. But in truth, I have nothing against her.
A lot of people say the
travail has won you more sympathy from people and has made you more popular. Do
you agree?
Only a fool doubts a proof. There are so many people out
there who know that I am not a thief, that I am not a fraudster, that I don't
dupe people. A lot of people know what I stand for. I don't preach hate, I
preach humanity, I don't preach religion. So, these people can't just abandon
me. More so, some of these people have taken their time to check the real
matters in the case and they are wise enough to make up their minds. I have
mentioned this particular case several times in my preaching in the past, I
wrote about it in my book, 'Be Unstoppable', so it was not something that I was
trying to hide. It has been on for a long time and I thought it would be
finally resolved with time.
So, you went through
a these because you went ahead to marry someone else in 2007?
Yes, that was the beginning of the problem. I had earlier been kept in police custody for about a month when the case started in 2009. My bail application was delayed unduly. To make matters worse, the lady that I had just married then had packed out of the house with a child she had for me before I returned from that custody. She was overwhelmed and could not go through the experience with me. So, it was double jeopardy. And, I took the decision to marry another person so I could free my ex to go be with her husband in London after I later found out. I thought that would make her to let go. But it was not meant to be. This was someone who was so supportive, and submissive to me. She was not diabolical and was not given to undue publicity despite the fact that she was rich and even a little older than I am. But like I said, everything happens for a purpose.
What do you think
about the negative impressions Nigerians have about pastors, especially the
ones that are wealthy?