In a revelation that has shocked the global public about the prolonged terrorism and religious violence, plaguing Nigeria, Pastor Enoch A. Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Worldwide, has stated that over 8,000 branches of RCCG churches, located in the Northern part of the country, have been gravely affected by the crises.
Pastor Adeboye, the revered head of the church, revealed this in far-away Washington DC, the US capital, as he received “The Patriarch of Faith Honor” in the “US-Nigeria Faith Heroes Award Gala”, organized by the Save Nigeria Group of the USA (SNGUSA), a registered not-for-profit organization, headed by a caregiver, Stephen Osemwegie.
Adeboye received the award alongside President Trump, US congressmen, some pastors, activists and policy makers from the US and Nigeria, for their relentless fight against religious violence and terrorism.
Speaking freely to crowded bipartisan audiences from across the globe, apparently to douse the criticisms that he cared not for churches and Christians from the Northern part, who are at the butt of the crises, simply because he is from the South, where the crisis in lesser, Pastor Adeboye stated as thus;
“I smile in pains because in the North, where the persecution is tougher, I have more than 8,000 churches under my care. One of my daughters, a pastor in the North, went for evangelism. It’s simply telling everybody, loud and clear, “Jesus loves you.” That is all she was doing passing by the front of a mosque. Some people came out of the mosque and killed her. That was not hidden; it was news. And the case was not even investigated. The police did not even come”.
Speaking further on the daily persecution Christians suffer in the country, particularly its North, about which there had been controversies over “Christian genocide” classification by the US and others, Adeboye gave another example of an RCCG pastor, who leads a church in the same Northern region.
According to him, Boko Haram, the insurgent group and other jihadists had driven away churches in the Middle Belt sub-region of the North. Pastors of other churches had fled, but an RCCG pastor refused to move. The persecutors visited when he was not at home. They decided to leave him a gift that will cause him to flee, as they slaughtered his newly-born twins in the presence of his wife, their mother.
Adeboye, the soft-spoken and easy-going octogenarian clergy, who is fighting hard to stop religious violence and insecurity in the country, used the occasion to appeal to President Trump, to precipitate more actions against the terrorists and religious persecutors, while he forewarned;
“Younger Christians are not as cool-headed as those whose ‘stomach will not allow the soup to shake’. There are many of these younger ones, who are so restive now, that cannot be so enduring, if God was to take me home today. God have mercy.”