Bestiality: Now, some Nigerians are happy sleeping with animals!

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Innocence of Muslims: Nigerian troops quell anti-Islam movie protest in Jos

Nigerian forces in Jos dispersed protesters at the Central Mosque in Jos by firing live ammunition into the air.

It will be the second protest in Jos since the US-made anti-Islam movie ignited Muslim fury in the Middle East and Africa.

Eyewitness said two people are killed in Jos, but a military spokesperson, Captain Salihu Mustapha said there were no casualties.

The protester had begun the protest march carrying placards denouncing the US and moving towards the main street on Ahmadu Bello way when soldiers began firing off.

Businesses in the area hurriedly closed, and several residents retreated to their homes.

For holding crusades, I was charmed in Ijebu-Ode, attacked in Owo---Bishop Wale Oke

Bishop Francis Wale Oke is the President, Sword of the Spirit Ministry, Ibadan and the presiding Bishop of Christ Life Church, worldwide. He is also the national Vice-President, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) in South West. He speaks with EMMANUEL ADENIYI on the 30th Holy Ghost convention of the church, roles of the Holy Spirit in the end-time church and how Nigerian leaders undermine collective security of the country through incessant trips abroad for medical care. Excerpts:

Your ministry started in 1983…?

Not quite. 1983 was when the Holy Ghost convention started. Prior to that, I had begun to preach in 1975. The first crusade where I preached was organised by the Christ Ambassador Evangelistic Mission, Ibadan and it was held in Ode-Omu in December of that year. From that time the hand of God has been moving me from one level to another, but it was in 1980 that we began to get our own ministry organized when we started to publish the Sword of the Spirit magazine in May, I was still a student of the University of Lagos at that time, but when I finished I served in the same organization for whom I preached in 1975, and as soon as I finished my service year in 1982, we started the ministry like that; that was what led to the Holy Ghost convention being held in 1983. So, the ministry had been on with preaching in various parts of this nation before the convention, that was why when the convention was first held in 1983, 13 out of 19 states in the country then were represented. We never knew it was going to become a phenomenon like this, and God has blessed it in the last 30 years.

How has it been from 1975 up till this moment in terms of your experiences, challenges and having to start a ministry from scratch?

It has been very challenging but very exciting, because when God calls you, you are not alone. He stands by his servant. He didn’t promise that everything would be rosy and easy, He said in the world you would have tribulation, but be of good cheer because I have overcome the world. He also said many were the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivered him out of them all. So, we have had challenges, from men, from unfaithful brethren, challenges of finances, challenges of land owners and challenges of the occult who confronted us in crusades and meetings, but in all of these, God was with us, fought for us and made us more than conquerors.

Could you mention any specific challenges you will never forget in the course of starting the ministry?

Of course, there are quite a number of them. In 1984 when we had our crusade in Owo, it coincided with Igogo festival during the reign of Oba Ogunoye, and the Igogo people thought that we organised the crusade to confront them, and I didn’t know, we just planned it as directed by the Holy Spirit. The Igogo people came to attack us on the crusade ground with dangerous objects and I had to stand my ground to speak to their leaders in the name of the Lord and rebuke the demonic forces behind them. At the end of the day, a good number of them gave their lives to Christ.

When I went to Ijebu-Ode in May 1985, they threw what Yorubas call ata with charms and all that. I just saw a part of my body peel off, and somebody told me that it was ata, I asked what was ata, they explained to me that if one was attacked with the terrible charms that person would either be paralysed or go blind or die, but none of it happened. At the end of the day some of the people behind it gave their lives to Christ. We won’t leave this place if I begin to tell you all the challenges, but the greater the challenges, the sweeter the victory, it is good to serve the Lord.

What would you say informed the choice of this year’s convention theme, “The Anointing”?

In Zechariah 4:6, the Bible says it is not by might or power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. So, this end-time battle, whether it is a battle against Boko Haram, personal or general battle, it is the ability and strength of the Holy Spirit that enables us to have victory. If we do it on our own we will fail, we would be like Moses before he was anointed who went to do it his own way and he failed; he had to run and escape to the wilderness where God took him through the university of wilderness to learn that if you are going to succeed as an individual you have to depend on the Holy Spirit. It is about the Holy Spirit. In Isaiah 11:2, God promises the seven spirits of God: the spirits of the Lord, wisdom, understanding, counseling, might, knowledge and the spirit of the fear of God.  When these seven-fold spirits rest upon an individual it will not just be you working, it will be God working through you. He will be giving you directives, and He will make sure you succeed; because He is God He cannot fail. A man of God or an individual who works in partnership with the Holy Spirit cannot fail in life. We have invited the people of God to come and connect with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, partner with Him so that through the help of the Holy Spirit the challenges of their lives will be resolved, mountains in their lives will be made low, while the operation of darkness in them will also be destroyed, and then they will be empowered to do what they cannot do by themselves, because the anointing of the Holy Spirit is upon them. All the people that succeeded in the Bible did so because they were anointed, including Jesus our Lord, He had the anointing of the Holy Spirit on Him. If you allow the Holy Spirit to envelope you, then you will fulfil your destiny and not fail.

How can you relate this to the larger society, Nigeria for instance?

Many problems that confront Nigeria, political, socio-economic, Islamic insurgency, called Boko Haram, armed robbery, youth unemployment, the rot in the education and health system, they were not created in a day. We need the help God to solve these problems. Our leaders need wisdom, because wisdom solves problems any time, and it is the Holy Spirit that gives wisdom. That is why we are praying for our leaders to be anointed with wisdom to be able to deal with the multi-faceted problems facing the country. With the anointing of the Holy Spirit, wisdom comes, understanding comes and difficult things become easy. If we are going to go about it carnally, the problems will get complex. We are calling on the leadership of the country to ask God for wisdom to be able to deal with various problems in Nigeria. We are also calling on all Nigerians to pray and ask himself/herself, “in what way am I contributing to the problems of Nigeria, and in what way can I be part of the solutions to the problems of the country?” The problem is not about the leadership alone, it also affects the led. Nigerians should not ask for money from politicians before they are elected, rather they should ask them to provide potable water, fix the roads, provide electricity, good rail system and make aviation sector secure and safe, equip the universities and teaching hospitals, so that when the president or his wife is sick, he/she doesn’t have to go outside the country. When you fly the president or his wife out of the country for medical treatment, you jeopardise the security of the country. In a society where people ask for money and place demands on their leaders, the leadership will be corrupt, because the people are corrupt. This is why the leaders need to change, while the led should also change. There is a need for general re-orientation, we are trusting that the Holy Spirit will bring this about.

The church is supposed to serve as the megaphone of God to the society, would you say it has lived up to this in view of untoward happenings we see on a daily basis?

The church is doing its best, but it is having its own challenges too; we are trying to deal with that internally, because a corrupt church cannot change a corrupt nation. From time immemorial, when a prophet speaks, it is not everybody that listens; some do, some don’t, and Christianity does not spread by coercion, or through the sword or through the shedding of blood. It spreads by persuasion. God does not want to force anybody to serve Him, God wants everybody to choose. All we can do is to speak and try to persuade you, so if you choose to be persuaded, good, and if you don’t there is nothing anybody can do, because man is a free moral agent. So long that freedom of choice is there, we can’t get everybody to do what is right. The church is doing its best, but there is a room for improvement.

Would you give a pass mark to the church if you are to consider its efforts vis-à-vis the rot in the society?

The Bible says where sins abound, grace much more abounds. The only problem we have as a people is that we tend to focus more on the negative aspect of life. Some of the best private universities we have around today come from the church. It’s just that the society is not seeing this. Some of the people who have moved this society forward are products of the church. Church is working, but like I said we are not giving any kudos to ourselves, because the Bible even forbids us to that; we are pushing ourselves to do more. So long there is one soul, one sinner to be saved; the church still has a lot to do. We are not there yet, by the grace of God we will get there.

Has God told you anything about Nigeria?

Yes, the future of Nigeria will be great. The problems we are passing through right now will get more challenging, especially between now and 2015, but we are going to come out of them and emerge a prosperous nation.

What about the predictions of break-up?

It’s not going to happen. It looks the easy thing to do, but it will not happen; the people will be weary of the problems, and agree to talk on the way forward. They will sit down and talk having discovered that there is no alternative to it.

You said flying the wife of the president out of the country for medical check-up would compromise the security of the country, how do you mean?

When you are in the hands of your doctor, you are most vulnerable. He can see your nakedness; ask any question, he can extract any information from you. Any nation that wants to compromise the security and integrity of Nigeria just needs to plant its agents where these leaders are flown to, and you have all the critical information about Nigeria in your hands to attack and undermine its territorial integrity. What stops the government from equipping each of the teaching hospitals in the country to the highest standards? Nigeria has the largest number of qualified doctors in America than any other country, apart from Americans. These guys are ready to come back home if the government will provide the equipment to work with and pay them well. There is no reason why Mrs. Jonathan cannot go to the National Hospital in Abuja or other teaching hospitals in the country where she can be treated. So, the security of our nation is being compromised at the highest level. Can it happen that President Obama will be flown to Nigeria or South Africa to be treated? Will it ever happen? Why must it happen here? Our leaders are jeopardising our national security, we need to tell them to put things right. It is a reproach to us as a nation that our leaders are flown to Germany to be treated, whereas we parade some of the world’s best doctors. Most of our hospitals are glorified mortuaries; government should do something about them.

Could you tell us your background?

I was born in 1956 in Kasumu village. I spent the first 11 years before coming to Ibadan where I went to Wesley Teachers’ College, then later the polytechnic and gained admission to the University of Lagos. I studied Land and Engineering Survey; it was while in the university that I heard the call of God and got connected to Pastor Adeboye, Pastor Kumuyi, Bishop Benson Idahosa, Bishop David Oyedepo. My relationship with Pastor Adeboye started in 1977, he was my lecturer. He taught me mathematics.

How was Pastor Adeboye’s relationship with his students and teaching style?

He taught his students to pass, in fact at a time we had to name him the lecturer of the year. He was very principled, simple and straight forward, he never came late to class, and he would never leave until his time was over, and he wouldn’t make himself absent from class. When exams were approaching, if you missed Pastor Adeboye’s tutorial, you are finished, because he would bring like 10 questions and say, “In case they ask you these questions, this is how to answer them”, and he would work all of them out. And you can be very sure that four out of those questions would come out, though they wouldn’t come out verbatim. He wanted all his students to succeed. If anyone failed his class, I wonder if that person could ever pass again. I went to introduce myself to him in the first month of entering the university in 1977 having attended his lecture. He told me to see him, and from that time the relationship has been intact.

What would you say make Sword of the Spirit Ministry unique amongst others?

We have a commission to win souls massively all over the world, through mass evangelism. We plant churches, and I have conducted crusades in every major city of this country. God placed a special unction on the church to reach the world with the word of God. It is the prophetic and evangelistic edge of this ministry that makes it unique, and this is recognised all over the world.

The ministry has become an international brand, what remarkable achievements can you say God helped you to record in the last 30 years or thereabouts?

For two reasons I want play low on it. One, they say those who do the things that count do not stop to count them. I wouldn’t want to stop counting things. Two, there is nothing we do with our own strength; God is the doer of everything, because except the Lord build the house they labour in vain that build it. For example our university, I can’t say it is my university, it is a university God raised in our hands, or our schools, our books or our churches, I wouldn’t say this is what I have done; I have done nothing. All I have done is to yield myself to the hands of God to do what he likes with me. God is the doer of everything, so we cannot take the glory, we are just His vessels.

…and your expectations for the ministry in the next five or 10 years?

We are trusting God, He is going to multiply us. He will multiply us, we will not be few, He will also glorify us we will not be small. Governors, rulers will come from among us. He has promised to make this ministry truly global having its strong presence in every nation of the earth, and at the same time having strong presence in every part of this country. What He said in the past came to fulfillment, what He said now, we know, He will fulfil. He keeps His promises, so the future is bright; all we need to do is to follow Him and move with His instructions. So long as we walk with Him heaven is the limit.

Soldiers outgun Boko Haram in Maiduguri, killing 7

Twenty four hours after members of the extremist sect, Jama’atu ahlis sunnah lil daawati wal jihad, otherwise called Boko Haram, dismissed the resolve by governors and traditional rulers in the north to fight the sect, and pledged to escalate attacks on strategic telecommunication sites in the north east and north central regions of the country, men of the Joint task force (JTF) in Maiduguri killed seven of them in a gun battle and arrested thirteen others along Gwange junction.

JTF Spokesman, Sagir Musa, said security officials were conducting a cordon and search operation at Gwange junction when men he described as hoodlums started shooting at them. “The task force had no option than to respond with fire,” Mr. Musa said, adding, there were no fatalities on the part of the JTF operatives.

Mr. Abu Qaqa, the Boko Haram publicist, had boasted in an email message Thursday that the resolve by governors and traditional rulers in the north to fight the sect, “will come to nothing.” It was the first, direct, and public, response of the sect to the top structure of the northern elites.

Keen watchers of political events in the region believe the recent outburst of the sect represent a welling up of frustrations at recent security successes in disrupting their operational plans and eliminating key elements in its leadership ranks.

In response to these developments, Boko Haram tilted its operational fangs by attacking and destroying telecommunication base stations in Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, and Kano states claiming it was its way of punishing the telecommunication companies for alleged culpability in aiding security agencies to kill its members.

“We are attacking GSM [telecommunication] companies because they have helped security agencies to arrest and kill many of our members, and we will continue with our attacks on them until they stop,” said Mr. Abu Qaqa in his public rationalization of the act of arson.

Countering the Boko Haram rhetoric, Joint Task Force officials argued in return that the difficulties the sect was experiencing had its root in internal power play of the sect, and queried: “Did they register their SIM cards as Boko Haram members?” the JTF official queried adding that security agencies have no need for telecommunication companies to arrest sect members.

Sunday Adelaja: Nigerian cleric walking a tightrope in Ukraine

By Emmanuel Adeniyi, with Agency Reports

For Pastor Sunday Sunkanmi Adelaja, the founder and Senior Pastor of a Kiev-based, the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations church, this may not be the best moment for him and the ministry he started in Ukraine in 1993.

Just like the wave of oppositions and persecutions from Pharisees and Sadducees spread against Apostle Paul in his missionary journeys, Pastor Sunday, as he is fondly called in Ukraine, is currently battling with persecutions from the Ukrainian government and its apparatchiks, who seem poised to end the vast influence he wields in the country.

Presently, the government of Ukraine has pressed what looks like trumped-up charges against him. He has been accused of fraud and leading a criminal organization, though his ministry and well-meaning Ukrainians have risen up in his defence calling the charges spurious and mere victimization as well as an act of discrimination against the Nigerian said to have a powerful evangelistic call on him.

Ukraine, an Eastern European country which used to be part of the Soviet Union until 1991, practices liberal democracy and mixed economy, though the country, it is believed, still holds tight to vestiges of communism it inherited from the Soviet Union.

Some of the vestiges include arbitrary arrest of perceived enemies, restriction of movement of the accused, illegal imprisonment, racism, unfair trial and other widely condemned practices that pervade post-communist Ukraine.

Having been accused of having a hand in the collapse of King Capital, a mortgage company that collapsed few years ago due to the worldwide economic downturn that similarly plunged Ukrainian economy, he is said to have declined any link with the company, but claimed that it was owned by his church members.

According to Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, King Capital, defrauded innocent Ukrainians of their investments in the company when it collapsed in 2008, a claim Pastor Adelaja has since described as untrue and spurious.

According to a US-based Nigerian publisher, Dr. Segun Olanipekun, the charge pressed against Pastor Adelaja had been changed to a criminal one as he was billed to appear before the police last Tuesday, saying the church sees, “…this invitation and the deliberate change of the charge to a criminal one (as) part of the plot to jail the innocent pastor as he is seen to be a threat to the present government,” adding that five other members of the church were arrested ahead of Pastor Adelaja’s invitation.

Dr. Olanipekun, who said he had an encounter with the cleric in Kiev last year August, wrote in an online material that the pastor had been placed on “probation” by the government.

“It is a probation that prohibits Pastor Sunday from travelling out of Ukraine. It also subjects his actions and activities in and out of the church to state surveillance. Like a criminal under parole, he is constantly under watch.

“That has been his experience since 2009 when he was fraudulently framed in a ludicrous charge that he was a scammer along with some of his church members in a failed real estate business he knew nothing about.

“The frivolous charge by Ukrainian Interior Ministry accuses him of defrauding the country’s citizens of money, an amount which the ministry’s Department for Media Liaison and International Activity then put at $100m.”

Though unconfirmed, the pastor, whose congregation is the largest in the country of about 45 million people, and the largest church in Europe, is said to be a victim of political and religious victimization.

His ministry comprising the dregs of the Ukrainian society, whom it raised from the streets and gave a new lease of life are said to have lost faith in the secular authority, but gave their support to a charismatic evangelical organization that raised them from the fringe of the Ukrainian society.

Many politicians in the country are also said to depend on the large congregation for support in order to have electoral victory, which played out in 2004 when members of the church took active part in Orange Revolution between 2004 and 2005 against the election of the present president, Viktor Yanukovych, believed to have been rigged.

The protests aided the call for a re-run which was later won by Viktor Yushchenko, though Viktor Yanukovych later won another election in 2010, thus felling the insinuation that President Yanukovych may be using the charges against the cleric to avenge his 2005 election loss.

Another source of Pastor Adelaja’s problem has been traced to deep opposition the local Eastern Orthodox Church bears against Adelaja’s charismatic ministry. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine sees Pastor Adelaja’s protestant church as a threat to its existence not only in Ukraine but in the whole of Eastern Europe where it has challenged many of their doctrinal beliefs.

To Pastor Adelaja, these persecutions are political. In an interview he granted Dr. Olanipekun, he was quoted as saying that he would survive these charges as he has survived 22 cases so far.

“Apart from persecutions, I do not think I face any challenge. I am enjoying the ride. I call myself pastor without tears. But the greatest challenge I face now has to do with government, society and persecution. I am undergoing one right now.

“There is a case in court. It is a case that involves members of our church that have investment company that collapsed during the recent economic meltdown, lost money and the government found it as a good opportunity, a good excuse to charge me to court. I have survived 22 court cases so far. This to the government was a good one because members of our church were involved. The only thing the police were asking me is: Do you know them? And my answer is: I know them.

“So as long as I know them they believe I must be involved. So it is just a way to be able to corner me. They have been looking for a way and Satan did a good job this time. He gave them a good excuse. The people who started the company are not denying it.

“They say it is our own; pastor does not have anything to do with it. But the media, the government do not even talk about them but they are only focusing on Pastor Sunday. They only need the big name; the one that can be sensationalized and scandalized. But they would fail as they did in the past.”

Though, crowd who don’t like his face and the fact that he is a black man preaching Christ have at several times thrown banana peels at him in public, the Nigerian-born pastor who was described by the New York Times as a success story in the former Soviet Union, has remained undaunted, he could, however, be walking a tightrope while protecting his religious empire built in a post-communist Eastern European society.

“He is being victimized”

Excerpt of interview granted by Pastor Sunday Adelaja’s lawyer, Mr. Andrey Fedur, on the victimization of the cleric.

You told us you have mentioned before that in order to overthrow power, people must demonstrate strong will. But how can they show strong will if so many of them are literary mesmerized by the numerous sects and all sorts of activists? Yet, today in court you are defending, one of the leaders of such a church, who is also accused of fraud?

I want to say that I do not see all these religious cults as the official public opinion tells me to, but have my own stance on the matter. Religion, in my opinion, in many cases is used to strengthen the secular power. A striking example of that is Orthodoxy. And officials of these agencies have always fought for power, and will continue to fight. As for Sunday Adelaja, I must admit, he did not commit those crimes he is accused of. The prosecution of Sunday Adelaja regarding fraud is absurd. The religious community, which he heads is massive, and many do not like it. That is the main reason for the persecution.

But he is mesmerizing Ukrainian people?

 No. The problem with Sunday is different, and I know exactly when and how it all began. He is not the one who started it all. Actually, he was a victim of this action. The fact is that a current "prisoner" of Lukyanovka jail, Yuriy Lutsenko, stirred up all this trouble and his goal was not Sunday, they wanted to use him just as an instrument, but another man.

Do you mean Chernovetsky, mayor of Kiev city?
Yes. But he is much smarter than the organizers of this process, so it all ended in nothing. But this situation is different. The persecution of Sunday started while the Yuliya Timoshenko political party was in power. Now it seems like the political party has changed and changed dramatically, and therefore the persecution should have ended in theory, but it still continues.

I remember a moment in the video of his worship service, when, after the government changed, Sunday announced that he had seen God in dream, and he told him that the case against him would be closed
So, you want to know that it has not ended yet? And when I started to study this issue, I did not anticipate that there would be such a huge project, and because of that, there would of course be conflict. Sunday has created in Ukraine one of the largest churches, or call it how you want
Maybe a sect?
As you wish. But it’s better to take another description -an organization or group which appears to be larger than any of the existing churches in Ukraine in numbers, and even more significant is its standard of order! Why did I say any? Because the Orthodox churches are not united. And this is a serious problem. Some leaders of the church need to discredit any serious competitor. That's the problem. Once I was in this church. Well, I have never seen in any church before such a number of presentable (in all respects) people.
And still how did you explain this?
Perhaps there’s a very simple explanation (like the rest of this branch of Christianity); in such churches, people are given positive information and thoughts; whereas in the Orthodox church they mostly "program" people for negative thought, suffering and anguish. And only in the afterlife they are divided into two groups - those who go to heaven and who to hell. And the more miserable you are here, the more likely you are to have a happy afterlife there. I think it is incorrect.
Is it not the same with Adelaja?
I will repeat once again, that I am unbiased towards all religious groups. I am no expert in this area and perhaps do not understand some important facts. I once was given the chance to the congregation, in Sunday Adelaja’s church. There were several thousand people in the audience, and none of them left. And, obviously, it is difficult to listen to one person for so long. I've come to a conclusion: such religious communities offer some kind of positivity. That distinguishes them from others. In other words, just as most people allow themselves to do something for fun. Some like playing soccer or basketball – that is also a kind of mesmerizing in a way, to switch off from problems and work. And these people have found their own way. Faith is something purely personal, peculiar to a specific person.
Let's go back to your defendant pastor, who is yet a foreigner. At what stage is the case of Adelaja and his accomplices today? Are any of the affected testifying against the pastor?
He does not purport to Ukrainian citizenship and land for sure. Indeed, in the Dniprovsky district court of Kiev a criminal case hearing is taking place on his charge and others. Adelaja did not commit the crimes for which he was accused and, therefore, had no accomplices. He has nothing to do with the company "Kings Capital", he is not its founder, has never worked in this company in any position, did not collect money from people in favor of the company, etc. The paradox of the prosecution is that Sunday Adelaja, who has nothing to do with this company, is a defendant in this case, and the managers of this company, who collected money from people and earned on this – are witnesses. Neither in court nor in pre-trial investigation did anyone give any evidence that they had passed money to Sunday Adelaja. If the court makes its decision on the results of the investigation on the basis of evidence collected, I have no doubt that my client will be acquitted. But I have no faith in the objectivity of the court.

Culled from: www.godembassy.com