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