Pastor Adeboye, my poor self, and others must prioritize teaching the Wikes, the George Sekibos, and the Uche Seconduses to be rich towards God. This means not to touch what does not belong to them.
Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye is no small figure in religion or in Nigeria. I can boast that there is hardly any Nigerian who does not know him. It is subject to debate which is bigger between the octopus Catholic Church, which was before Adeboye was born in Nigeria, and the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), which Adeboye serves as the General Overseer. Adeboye has a doctorate in mathematics and lectured at the University of Lagos before destiny took him to the Redeemed Christian Church of God under the man who started the church, Pa Josiah Akindayomi, who is now late. Pastor Enoch Adeboye is now popularly called Daddy GO, which is after his official title as General Overseer. Overseer is what you find in the New International Version (NIV), but when some church leaders in Nigeria felt they had grown so big and must distinguish themselves from the small fries that follow them as pastors or overseers, they chose for themselves the big title of General Overseer, which is not biblical. All of you are brethren—that is what Jesus taught. But to hell with that; these leaders must be distinguished.
Pastor Enoch Adeboye is always in the news for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I rise to defend him on occasions when the watching public took him to the cleaners, but on other occasions one felt so compelled to curtail the excesses of this man of God. Nigeria is in the midst of moral trouble that is threatening to collapse the nation. The church that Adeboye heads has added to the moral decline, as many of the leaders and members have been involved in some of these moral infractions. There was one where a provincial pastor, another creation of the RCCG that has no mention in the Bible, was reported to have stolen so many billions of the federal government’s money. His escapade became known after he died in an air crash, and trouble ensued between his ‘two wives,’ who quarreled on how to share his loot, including the houses he had built with the stolen money. The wife at home did not know there was another wife outside with children for this late ‘provincial’ pastor. Pronto, the mistress took her children and went to the wife at home with the request that they should quietly share the properties so that the story will not be disclosed. The wife at home refused, claiming she was the only wife. That was how the story leaked to the press. When Pastor Adeboye was asked, his reply was casual: Jesus had one Judas among his twelve disciples too. Very casual. So though called Redeemed, which means a change in attitude because of the grace of Jesus, RCCG is well known as a house of sin. Many things happen there that should not be mentioned among sinners.
There is a recent one, which is so alarming. It also involves Pastor Adeboye in person. It raises questions about how men who claim to serve God should go on to encourage the people they lead to do the exact opposite of what Jesus commands. In Lk 12:13-21, Jesus taught comprehensively a principle that all Christian leaders know and teach but hardly practice, especially in Nigeria. A man approached Jesus as he taught a multitude. The man asked him to help divide the inheritance between him and his brother. Jesus wasted no time in rebuking this man: “Who made me a divider over you? he asked the man. And turning to the crowd, he warned, “Beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth.” But in the Church, and as we will soon see in RCCG, “a man’s life consisteth in the abundance of the things he possesseth. “ A pastor named Korede Komaiya, who calls himself a disciple of Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners Chapel, said before an Abuja church recently that it is a sin to sit under a poor pastor and that he can’t sit under a poor pastor. This is the spirit that rules in the Church in Nigeria. Obviously this is not the spirit of Christ, the head of his Church. Nigerian pastors, the most prominent of them all, have turned the scriptures upside down, leading believers into the bush. Greed is the undoing of Nigeria as a nation. Our leaders steal from the public till in billions of naira. Stealing has become a qualification for public office to the extent that Nigeria has become a failed nation, a country sitting over treasure that even advanced nations desire to have but whose citizens lack basic amenities of life. When these leaders steal, they give some of the loot to the Church, some to the pastors, and the rest they keep for their families and their cronies.
Let’s see one ridiculous experience of Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of RCCG. We take note that because of his long and checkered experience and age, about 84 now, whatever Pastor Enoch says is taken by the average Christian as gospel truth. Everybody believes him; they think he sources all he does and teaches from the very heaven. That was how he carried himself as he described his encounters and experiences. It is in this light that whatever Pastor Enoch Adeboye does and teaches must be watched and judged more virulently. When Pastor Enoch Adeboye falls, he takes countless others with him.
Recently, between December 2025 and January 25, Pastor Adeboye was at Port-Hacourt to minister at the RCCG Holy Ghost Rally in the oil city in Rivers State. The programme took place at the Ameisimeka Stadium. It was attended by the who’s who in Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, the stormy petrel of Nigerian politics, a man whose second name is controversy, and Senator George Sekibo, who recently also invited Nyesom Wike to see his mansion he called OGU-ALABO Fortress. The entry of Wike into that fortress was like the entry of celestial beings into the court of heaven. Up in the front was a biker who rode in style; following was an armored car whose driver was not seen—the whole vehicle was totally sealed—and then the almighty Wike himself riding in a state-of-the-art Jeep. Sekibo studied architecture in school, and that perhaps whetted his appetite for the grandiose. He built a house that is indescribable and that is estimated to be around 10 billion naira. Sekibo led Wike around the sprawling palatial mansion with a protruding belly obviously not caused by too much eating but by the pleasures of life. Though uncomfortable with that protruding stomach, he was holding a walking stick for balance. George Sekibo still managed to swing to the local music to the admiration of his guest Nyesom Wike, who also shuffled his legs.
Next in the audience for Pastor Adeboye was Uche Secondus, a politician of note who earned a certificate in commerce from the British Chamber of Commerce. Uche held offices in the PDP, where he was secretary, acting chairman, and chairman before the PDP, which boasted to rule Nigeria for 60 years but went down in defeat by the APC led by the late President Muhammadu Buhari. Secondus did not study architecture but has a great taste for palaces, though he is not known to have come from a royal family. Uche Secondus also wears controversies like a garment. The EFCC accused him of having received 27 cars from one Jide Omokore, a business associate of Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria’s one-time Minister of Petroleum Resources. Do you remember Diezani Alison-Madueke? She was so beautiful that her boss, President Goodluck Jonathan, assured the nation she couldn’t steal a kobo. But Diezani Alison-Madueke is answering to charges of corruption during her tenure as minister of petroleum resources. Secondus promised to return the 27 cars, but the EFCC insisted he must pay back about 310 million naira. Secondus was not a player in the oil and gas industry but found a way to make some money with the cooperation of Deziani and Jide Omokore. Uche Secondus was born on March 1955, which makes him roughly 70 years old now. Perhaps it was to mark this special age and to thank God for sparing his life in spite of the deep violence of Rivers State politics that Secondus built his sprawling palace and invited Pastor Enoch Adeboye to dedicate it. God never told anybody in the Bible to dedicate a house or even the Temple, and there was not a single mention of the act in the New Testament. But pastors must be big, and so they make it their duty to dedicate people’s houses. They do that to give the impression that the blessings of God will be upon such houses once they dedicate them, however the owners of those houses live their lives, foul or fair. Usually only the houses of the very prominent ones are visited and dedicated, a way to get some money into the pockets of the pastors. Who cares about members who live in “face-me-I-face-you houses”?
It is not explicit if Uche Secondus and Senator George Sekibo are members of the RCCG; they could be, but it is very certain they have a close relationship with the church and are known big donors in the church. Neither of them was in the crowd; they couldn’t have been. They were in special places not too far from Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the main minister. Secondus will not allow Adeboye to leave town without blessing his new mansion. Like Jacob, who held tightly to the angel that fought with him and said that angel will not go until he blesses him, Secondus held on to Adeboye to receive a blessing. As the tour through the palace went on, a large photograph of Adeboye in his signature safari suit hung conspicuously on a wall. And then Adeboye cut the tape to declare the house open in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A friend who is one of the big pastors of the RCCG in America argued that Adeboye might not know the size of the house he was called to dedicate until he got there. Sekibo’s mansion was built in Ogu in the midst of the squalor and deep poverty that has become of Porthacourt. According to this friend, Adeboye was in Port-Hacourt for evangelism and could have been invited to dedicate the building without Adeboye knowing he was being invited to dedicate a very massive mansion built on one man’s greed and covetousness. He was a bit correct, but a warning is necessary for Pastor Adeboye and all of us pastors in Nigeria. It reminds me of the words of my own pastor, Tunde Bakare, himself also a disciple of Pastor Adeboye. “I don’t name babies I don’t know how he or she was born.” Pastor Adeboye would have turned back immediately he got to the house, or he would have preached a corrective message. Luke 12:13-21, to which Pastor Adeboye is no stranger, would have been very appropriate to correct hearts on that occasion. As Pastor Adeboye left, he entered his car, but his right leg was still outside; a woman carefully helped him to lift the leg into the car. It was an ugly scene that may not be noticed by many, especially those who have deified Pastor Adeboye. He must be rendered such service; he is a man of God. He is not just a man; he is a man of God. He belongs to a special breed of men who hear from God specifically. Tunde Bakare again: “The best of men are at their very best still men.” That woman’s deed sent a clear message to Adeboye and the Church that Pastor Adeboye had gone there not only to encourage the worship of Mammon but also to receive worship. Worship of leaders happens frequently in RCCG, where pastors are deified in the name of honour. Jesus said, “All of you are brethren.” Let none of you be a rabbi. The greatest of you must be the servant of all. The woman’s response to Pastor Adeboye should have sent clear signals to Pastor Adeboye that he has replaced Jesus in His Church or that he is already competing with Jesus in His Church. That was not the first time; there had been many such deeds. For example, the bed upon which Adeboye received his open heavens revelation is now a Mecca that everybody who wants to have their prayers heard must visit.
Jesus did not forsake the very rich, but he used every occasion to teach them the right way of God. In the house of a Pharisee, he told them to stop competing for the front seats at feasts. He warned another Pharisee who was too full of himself and criticized a woman he deemed a harlot for wiping the legs of Jesus with her hair—he told the Pharisee he did not wash his legs since he came into his house. He let that Pharisee know that although the woman’s sins were many, they were forgiven because she loved much. Uche Secondus, George Sekibo, and the third of these stupendously rich in Port-Hacourt, Herbert Wigwe, the late CEO of Access Holdings Limited, are not different from other men and women, but they have to be taught well so that their money does not take them to hell. Herbert Wigwe has his own state-of-the-art mansion in Oyinkan Abayomi, formerly Queens Drive in Ikoyi, Lagos, a mansion built on 23000 square meters of land directly opposite the lagoon, fully automated; my tech-savvy Gen Z son who works in Lagos described the house to me as a “smart house.” From my son I got to know that just as there is smart television, there are also smart houses. One day RGCC will become a smart church, if it is not one already. But everybody must be smart to make the kingdom of heaven. Herbert Wigwe, before he died in a helicopter crash in the US, which claimed the lives of Wigwe, his wife, and their son, was a member of the RCCG, House of David parish in Lagos, where he was a financial pillar. He and his team were in the US to watch a sporting event. Wigwe’s Ikoyi has 20 rooms and a room described as a ‘panic room.’ That room is a sanctuary against robbers and bandits. It is bulletproof. Wigwe made sufficient provision for himself and his family to be alive, but they died in a crash. When I first saw that house, I was so aghast that I took my keyboard and began to knock out condemnation of it. I had finished and posted it on Facebook before I remembered I had to ask God who’s really the man behind the house. What he told me shocked me, and it must warn Pastor Adeboye and all of us small pastors. The Lord said, “He is one of those who are behind all the confusion in the country.” Pastor Adeboye fasted for hundreds of days to God for the salvation of Nigeria. But he and many of us are still encouraging the men and women who are ravaging the country in business and politics. We stroke their egos because they finance our grandiose projects with which we define ourselves. Poor!
Rivers State is the richest state in Nigeria in terms of the quantity of oil under its soil and in terms of the allocation from the Federal Government to it, but the state is one of the poorest in the nation. 64.7% are multidimensionally poor, and 4.4% of the 7.2 million population are poor. Infrastructure is poor, education is nothing to write home about, electricity is epileptic, the people are very poor, and violence has become a profession. Rivers State is home to the most violent of leaders and followers, and cultism is rampant. Prostitution is rife. Yet churches are bursting at the seams. What is the quality of these churches? Saints who don’t know their left from their right, saints who have imbibed the ways of darkness with one leg in the Church and the other in the world, and leaders who only know and worship Mammon. In vain these people worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men, Jesus teaches. What is the essence of a huge church that worships the pastor? What is the essence of a church that lives only for the world, whose hearts are so greedy and covetous, and who compete with the world in the things of the world? It seems the elites of Rivers State have formed a culture of competing in palatial houses, “My house is bigger than yours.” Houses built with money accumulated from oil theft, insulting salaries and allowances for the legislature, or stolen from the treasury. “You fool, whose are those things going to be that you have accumulated and stored away when your soul is required of you?” is the reprimand of Jesus to the rich man who “laid treasure to himself and is not rich towards God.” Pastor Adeboye, my poor self, and others must prioritize teaching the Wikes, the George Sekibos, and the Uche Seconduses to be rich towards God. This means not to touch what does not belong to them and to remember the poor.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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