The Incessant Persecution Of Pastor Sunday Adelaja.

My friends all, I am inspired today to pay tribute to another Nigerian icon whose admirable sense of mission has done so much good for our country.

In a season of great national decay, when the international image of our country has been so battered by a myriad of self-inflicted ailments, quite a few patriotic Nigerians abroad stood out to help launder our image and convince the world that Nigerians are essentially good people. Through their courage, dogged honesty and hard work, they have excelled in their callings and have stood tall, convincing their host nations that really, Nigerians are not as bad as they are being portrayed. One of such patriots is Pastor Sunday Adelaja, the Ogun State born evangelist who rose from being a common student in USSR to the founder and pastor of the largest religious congregation in Europe, the Ukraine-based Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nation (aka God’s Embassy). This is the story of a man who against all odds established a church in a communist country and nurtured it through dint of hard work and utmost faith to greater heights. He became the symbol of the never-say-die spirit of the Nigerian people. Over the years, Pastor Adelaja has debunked the notion that Nigerians are a bunch of scammers and fraudsters by helping to transform millions of Ukrainians through the instrumentality of his hugely popular church.

His huge contributions to the development of Ukraine notwithstanding,  there is however a sore point in his relationship with some of the people of his host country who not only feel threatened by his ever rising profile as a successful black man in a predominantly white nation but are hell bent on taking over his church and sending him back to Nigeria. For a long time, due to envy, the machinations of rivals and uneasy vibes from the ever threatened Orthodox church, Adelaja was placed under probation by the government of Ukraine.

As soon as he got to the pinnacle of his calling his many travails began. From among fellow Christians,  especially some members of the Orthodox Church Adelaja got his most fervent opposition. I first got interested in Pastor Adelaja during the hay days of this persecution by the communist Government of Ukraine between 2009 and 2012. Here was a man who in spite of untold skepticism stayed dogged in his quest to transform his ministry to the largest, most resourceful organization of its kind in Ukraine. Unfortunately,  he had powerful forces in the Orthodox church who felt threatened by the skyrocketing growth of this African-led pentecostal movement, on the one hand, and even a tiny section section of his congregation who had still not reconciled themselves to a black man leading the church so powerfully and had been nursing a take-over bid. The Ukraine Orthodox Church at a point even attempted to nail him with the false accusation that he was “spreading strange Christian doctrine and using voodoo” to attract new members to his church. They could not understand how an African could lead a church to such phenomenal growth and this hugely evident evangelistic prowess that resulted in the restoration and rehabilitation of the wretched of the Ukrainian society – alcoholics,  drug addicts,  prostitutes and vagrants’ etc – to the path of peace and progress.

Besides that, it is alleged that there are certain fifth columnists in the church who, in their quest to wrest the church from him have determined to put so much encumbrances on his path. One of such is the alleged move to hang the scandal of adultery on his neck, one of the most convenient ways, nowadays, of getting rid of “erring” or “stubborn” pastors. The question is how feasible is it for a pastor to be dating twenty (20!) women in his church and the church is still waxing strong!  This is not Africa where there is so much secrecy and reverence attached to Men of God. This is Ukraine, one of the hotbeds of atheism during the Soviet era and a European society with little time for the kind of cultural inhibitions we harbour here. So it would have been easy feast for the the vibrant Ukrainian and other European media.  To me, this allegation of serial adultery against Sunday Adelaja looks like a rather convenient way of giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it. More than any other individual in Ukraine, indigene or alien, Sunday Adelaja has moulded and re-ordained destinies and has helped so many dysfunctional families regain their grooves. He has mended so many broken homes and restored couples to loving ways through his teaching and counselling prowess.

Adelaja’s success came against the odds of a post-communist Ukrainian society still finding it hard to recover from decades of state-sponsored repression and atheistic tendencies. Has he not been blessed with such admirable quality of grace under fire, the kind of travails he suffered daily from a then-hostile pro-communist government would have broken him. If they were not threatening him with deportation today, or using state power to stymie the great trajectory of his ministry, they were using series of grave allegations to tarnish his image and by so doing snatch the leadership of the church from his hands. On scores of occasions was he charged to court by the government of then – President Yanukovych with nothing particularly untoward found against him. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry also leveled accusations of defrauding the country’s citizens of money, to the tune of $100m. It turned out to be false, unfounded and Adelaja was vindicated by the country’s legal system.   That time, observers believed that this was not unconnected to the fact that members of the Adelaja’s church allegedly took active part in the demonstrations that ushered in the successfully carried out Orange Revolution between November 2004 and January 2005 which ousted then president Viktor Yankovic. When Yankovic re-captured the presidency in 2010, it was clear he was ready to pay back the church for supporting the Orange Revolution.  When all other shenanighans failed, the Pastor’s detractors now appear hell-bent on using the instrumentality of sexual scandal to pull him down.

And Nigerians, in the usual pull-him-down syndrome are not helping matters. Rather than rising to protect our own, we are ready to jump at the slightest hint of scandal, excoriating and pillorying our heroes without proper investigation into the roots of their travails. To me, the tendency to blow the Pastor’s challenges out of proportion is a great disservice to the good work he has done for our nation. Rather than help detractors pull him down, we should stand by one of the nation’s worthy ambassadors in the Diaspora. Sunday Adelaja, to me should be celebrated rather than maligned with unfounded allegations aimed at tarnishing his hard-earned image. Sometimes we tend to see celebrities as super men and women who cannot be hurt. So we don’t mind hurling insults, insinuations and blackmail at them with impunity. But celebrities are humans too. They hurt and when innuendos are hauled at them unrelenting, especially when they are glaringly unfounded, we are surely guilty of insensitivity. Among these, Adelaja’s case is unique. Not only does he deserve the benefit of doubt in the current spate of effort to destroy his reputation, we should rather honour him for the many doors he has opened for Nigerians abroad; the door of respect, success for his compatriots coming to Ukraine and the door of a second look at our people not as criminals but as normal people, a race of determined, hard working and adventurous souls.

As his compatriots, we should not be hoodwinked by the shenanigans of a very few envious blackmailers. We should rather see an icon in danger of the malignant act of jealous iconoclasts who are hell bent on wrestling from Adelaja’s hand a church that has defied all odds to get to the pinnacle of evangelism internationally.

By Sola Ojewusi

Ex: lagosianmagazine