Q: Your wife has been playing a major role in your ministry, how did you meet her?
A: We are from the same village. I spent one month fasting and praying that God should show the girl he had for me. At the time, I was ripe for marriage. I had begun to speak across the globe. I had ministered in Europe and the United States and almost all the universities in Nigeria. I led my first mission to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1972. I led my first mission to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Enugu campuses in 1973. That means that by 1975 I was already known worldwide. So, there was need for me to ensure that only the girl the Lord had for me would be the one I would take as my wife. It was one month of confinement and fasting night and day without bathing. I only drank water during the period.
Q: Did you say one month fasting?
A: Yes. Then I could do one month fasting with ease.
Q: What of now?
A: God asked me to stop in 1986.
Q: How then did you propose to her?
A: I said to God if she is the woman, speak to her. Let there be an indication that she had heard from you. One day she came to me and said God had spoken to her. I said I knew.
Q: Any regrets so far?
A: No. It is amazing that we have never had what you call mutual aggressiveness. That is to say when I am angry she will never be angry. There is something people don’t seem to know. God gives you a person of opposite character because when the pendulum swings to the left it requires an equal and opposite force to bring it to the right and maintain the equilibrium. God cannot give you a woman of the same character. He must give you a woman. He must give you a man or woman of opposite character then you will overcome that incompatibility. Incompatibility was ordained by God and allowed to bring out the romance of marriage. If you are generous person, an extrovert, God must give you the opposite. If you are a prayer warrior, God cannot give you another prayer warrior. When we argue, we do passionately.
Q: What was your upbringing like?
A: I had a father who was my hero. He was caring and very intelligent. He was the first man to ride a bicycle in Ikot Ekpene. He could speak several languages fluently and a man of proverbs. When my father died while I was about ten years old, I went to Ogoni land to reside with my uncle. I never lacked anything. God has always provided for me. I have never had to knock on doors for doors to open.
Q: What about your evangelism?
A: My evangelism is very simple. I am called by God to show people the ability and availability of God. To show people that there is nothing God cannot do. I have written fourteen books. In one of these books, Even Now, you will hear testimonies from two girls bedridden for twelve years. At the Redeemed Provincial Meeting this year, I told them there were 69 people that had been poisoned. They all vomited the poison one after the other.
Q: Would it be correct to say your calling was accidental?
A: No. I think I have the calling right from my mother’s womb. Mind you, God decides when to reveal who he has chosen.
Q: What will you describes as one of your greatest moments in ministry activities?
A: I think the greatest moment was the Greater Onitsha for Christ Crusade in 1990. It was the first time I saw twisted legs being unwound before the crowd and cameramen falling over each other to get the shots. That was also the first time a Dennis Memorial Grammar School blind boy had sockets planted into his eyes. He was born blind from his mother’s womb. There were also many crippled students of Anglican Girls Grammar School in Onitsha, who used to attend school on crutches, but they left the crusade ground healed without their crutches. The students from both colleges took to the streets of Onitsha the next day, jubilating.
Q: There is this belief that some so called men of God derive their power from the devil. Would you comment on this?
A: I do not know. The word, miracle, means it is beyond the province of the mind. So it is beyond our own comprehension. For any person to start speculating, it is because he cannot understand what is happening. If a man’s power is not from God, he will not last. We don’t need to quarrel over any man’s anointing, give him time. The truth will show.
Q: Churches nowadays preach prosperity. Is that the most important subject for mankind?
A: I think it is ignorance of the word of God because the Bible preaches about prosperity. Ignorance has no walls., no gate, and no padlock. It is the greatest mountain that any man climbs. We argue out of ignorance when we have not gained access into the mysteries of the Bible. God says that once righteousness is in place, prosperity will follow. I cannot have a relationship with the President and live a poor life, God forbid. If the President were my friend and knows that I have no money to feed my family and refuses to help me, you cannot call him my friend.
Q: Would it be right for one to say that all prosperity is from God?
A: Ah, you can say that because the Bible says promotion does not come from the east or west. It is only God that gives a man wealth.
Q: But we have instances of people who acquire their wealth through fetish means. Are those also ordained of God?
A: There is what we call Godly prosperity. There is also what we call worldly prosperity. Time will always reveal the two of them in a short while. A man can use his mother to make money, but it will not last. He will not enjoy that wealth because he won’t have the peace. When God has blessed a man, peace will go with it; fulfilment and satisfaction will go with it. That will make him humble and meek.
Q: There was a time a serious accident involving members of your family occurred. How did it happen?
A: A man who has not gone to the other side of life has no right to preach. Any man who has not suffered cannot comfort those who are suffering. If you have not experienced tragedy, you cannot comfort those who are going through it.
On the day you were talking about, God had spoken to me in the month of June. God said to me that the day would come in my life when he would not answer any of my prayers. It came to me as a revelation three times and I told my wife. In the last revelation, the person involved in the accident was my wife. By 5am that day armed robbers broke into my office and removed everything there. By 4pm same day, my car plunged into the river with my three children. The driver headed toward a bend, and when he applied the brake, the car somersaulted into the river. When I came in to rescue the children, my wife also dived in behind me.
Remember that I grew up in Rivers State as a result of which I can swim. While I was swimming against the current towards the car to rescue the children, a voice said to me that your wife was drowning behind. I left the children and wen for her. I carried her with one hand and swam to the shore where I kept her in safety. I went back to the river for the children because a child stays alive in water for about two and half hours. I rescued them (two children and two cousins) and put them in another car. We had not driven up to five months when an oncoming car ran into us. The impact was such that the bonnet and bumper of our car flew out. I stepped out of the car and was pacing up and down when somebody ran to me to inform me that the bus being used by my musical group caught fire.
Q: Does it mean there was nothing you could do since you said you had this revelation?
A: I asked all the pastors in the Council of Gospel Ministers to fast with me for one month and God said no, you have to go through the rest. So what happened at the end of the experience. I’m grateful that God took control, we were able to overcome.
Q: Have you worked for someone in your life?
A: I only worked as a manager in a construction company in Calabar?
Q: What was the experience like?
A: I was still preaching and working.
Q: How were you able to combine them?
A: It was difficult, but I enjoyed the two.
Q: At what point did you decide to call it quits?
A: It was God that told me to resign.
Q: How did that manifest?
A: There was this brother who came to me and said God told him to inform me He wants me to become a preacher and an evangelist. When I told my boss I wanted to resign to become a full time preacher, he doubled my salary and asked me not to resign. I asked God, why do I have to leave this good job? God said he would pay me. Students came to me saying God told them to tell me to lead a crusade in the south eastern states. The take off point was in Uyo. As soon as we closed work, I drove straight to the College of Education, Uyo. Immediately I entered the auditorium, it began to rain. I stood up and said God, if you have called me to come and preach here, stop this rain and the rain stopped. I asked God to give me more evidence. I observed that every time I went to work, I would become sick. When I return home I would be well. That was how I left.
Q: Do you have some other social responsibilities apart from your hospital?
A: We are building a university where aircraft will be assembled. We are also building a cardiac hospital.
Q: How do you fund these programmes since you don’t have your own church?
A: God’s miracle. People have always granted us considerable discounts. As I am speaking to you, my friend already put down $3 million to ensure the realisation of the hospital project.
Q: What is your attitude to fashion?
A: I am not bothered about that. It is not what a man wears that determine who he is.
Q: How do feel about the way the country is going?
A: I weep every day. We are like a gigantic paradox in the midst of plenty. We are hopelessly and stupidly poor. Nigerians are not good thinkers. The other problem is that our chief executives are also our pretending thinkers. You cannot be a chief executive and a thinker at the same time. We have people who play God by saying they know it all. There is no hope for Nigeria. We are so leprous having lost our capacity to feel any pain. Nothing shocks Nigerians.
Q: Who are you grooming to take over from you?
A: I do not think about that. It’s God’s business. Tomorrow belongs to God. I do not dissipate energy on that. Tomorrow is promissory note, yesterday was a cancelled cheque while today is cash.
From the Archives. This interview was first published in Saturday Punch.