My encounter with the Pentecostal mission was when I moved to Kaduna and Bishop David Oyedepo (then Pastor) was just coming to Kaduna to start his ministry. So I was one of the first crop of people to start the church with him. The Lord placed me by the side of the man of God to start with him, not as a full time staff, but at a point where I could see all that was been done at the point of leadership.

So the Lord placed me at the side of people he has sent to do the work. From Benson Idahosa, to Tunde Bakare, Osa Oni, etc, these are the people I have worked with over the years before the Lord called me to full time ministry.

The proliferation of Church in Nigeria is thought to be the cause of the poor spiritual standard of men we see all over today. How do you react to this?
Well, I believe that God is a God of process because I have seen this in all He has done. I have also seen that the Church is also going through a lot of transformation and eventually we will arrive where God expects the Church to be.

In the course of the process, we will see so many disappointments but not withstanding, we will see that God will use it all to work out His purpose. The scriptures say that in the latter days, the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth as the water covers the sea. Now, that will cause a lot of reactions. We are not seeing perfection but a process which through it all God will manifest His purpose.

Yes, Churches are springing up left and right, and of course this comes with its own side effects, a lot of immature leadership, but God will use it all to manifest his purpose.

Are you satisfied by the quality of sermons you hear around the churches?
I think this depends on the calling. A lot of people stand on the pulpit today but unable to identify their calling. People who are called have their calling. You just cannot but preached what the Lord tells you to preach if you are called. Those who are not called do all they know to keep people in Church and that is what you see all over the place.

In some churches, you preach some messages and the following Sunday, everybody or some people don't come again. The bible says in the latter days, men will have itching ears, and appoint to themselves preacher who will preach what they want to hear.

In my short life as a preacher, I've had a few people walk up to me as say I was too harsh and I say well, that is unfortunate. I have lost a few members because of that. But I have to say that I cannot but preach that which the Lord has sent me to preach and that is where the difference: who is the man of God that waits on God for a message and who is the self appointed minister that goes out to say what the people want to hear. So the line of demarcation comes out there, that some people are sent of God with a message and some are self appointed to please people.

In Nigeria, just anybody become pastors, Bishops, etc. But in the secular world, you must be trained to become a medical doctor, lawyer, etc. What is the place of training in the ministry? What training do you have as a pastor?
Well, I must agree with you that it's only in Christianity that people wake up and bear names and hold offices. I agree that people must trained and garner experience on this job. For me, I trained under so many people. I was one of the pioneers of Word of Faith Bible Institute in Kaduna. But before then I was also trained by a group of missionaries called The Navigators on, though a small area of training, family life and scripture memory, but it's amazing that that is what they do across the world, one-on-one bible study. This went a long way to prepare me as a pastor today. So these were the two trainings I had before coming here today.

What is the place of training, anointing and administration in the Church ministry?
I do believe that the anointing is the raw instrument that the Lord gave the church. This work cannot go on without the anointing. It comes before whatever we call training, administration. But I also believe that a trained man will utilize the anointing better than the man who is not trained. What I am saying is that I have come across a lot of ministers who are limited not because they did not have the anointing but because they did not have the training which the anointing could latch on.

If you go down the Church history, you will find so many casualties that is due to the fact that they were not trained. Many of them could not do as much as the anointing could carry them to do.

On administration, in an era of mega Churches, administration must come in instances like that. If not, ministering to the people will be hampered. Several big churches around us are not reaching the grassroots because they have poor administration. So anybody who will build an organisation as big as it could be should put some administration in place.

So administration, training are enhancers. Anointing is the raw material but outside these two, there is a limit to what the anointing can do. So, my advise to everyone is to get as much training as they could get.

To where are you taking the people committed to your hands? What is the vision of your Church?
I find myself telling the people why we are here. And I do this regularly because it is often seen that people suffer what we call vision leakage that after a while, nobody knows where we are here. So constantly and intermittently, we tell the people why we are here.

So if I have to advice the younger ministers today, I will say don't throw away what you are doing until your ministry grows to a point it can give you a full support before you can put your business aside to concentrate on the ministry.

I believe that God puts us here to raise men and women of purpose, with everyone doing the work of Jesus. So we believe that every person in our organisation must be able to seek the word of the bible and must be able to help some other person. That is the fulfillment of 2 Timothy 2Vs 2. “Unto Timothy, what you have heard, pass unto a faithful man and who will in turn be able to help another faithful man.” That is what we do here.

So you will see that we are not heavy on programmes, because well, programmes gather people but it does not do much more than that because once the programme stops, the people stop coming. We believe that the individual man must be taught. We have to sit with you as a person and grow you up enough that you have to be able to lead another person. That takes time and painful and growth could be slow. But as the Lord gives us the grace, we are getting there. That is the vision we have.


I keep telling people in Church that if God gives me 200 people, I will be glad to have the 200 people visit me in heaven. That is my dream and desire. I don't care how many people come to church or how many are here. We talk of numbers all the time but people do not know the quality of Christians we have. Some churches count thousand on Sunday but the quality of Christian they have is nothing.

When moving from Vet medicine to Christian ministry, were you not bothered about the economic implications of leaving certain economic footing for uncertain economic position?
I appreciate God and grateful to Him for the road through which He has led me to where I am today. I was a teacher but when I left teaching, I went into the business world. I had a publishing house, was a chairman of a finance company, was a chairman of a pharmaceutical company. God called me from all of these.

It might sound funny to you that I was not frustrated in what I was doing before God called me. But because I had God, the implication of leaving what I was doing was of less significance to me. In fact some of the companies went to court just to stop me from leaving but I said let God be true and man a liar.

The first challenge would be that your net worth was standing in one place while your friends and peers growing into heavens. It's not going to be easy to accept that. Your influence would dwindle immediately because once money stops coming, your friends go away and you seem to be irrelevant to the society. Everything will seem to nosedive once you leave a contemporary economic world for the ministry.

I will give a practical example: the last year I left what I was doing for the ministry, I gave my wife a cheque of N100, 000 every month to run the home. The next year when I entered the ministry, when I sat with the Bishop to draw a budget for the ministry, I was to take a salary of N10, 000 per month. That is a lot of scaling down that is if the money is there. I will not tell anybody to do that unless God called you.

... the issue of HIV is not new because it has always been with us. That it has not been discovered does not make it new. Psalm 91 talks about pestilences that stalk in darkness, so there are many more killers that have not been identified.

How has it been since then?
The fact is the Lord has still been faithful. Since then, I have sent three of my children to the university, and with that, I can tell you that it's not like I have any money stored up anywhere. But to His glory, three of then have graduated, we now have a doctor in the family, a lawyer and an architect. It takes money to train and we do not owe anybody.

Look at our ministry and you will see that God has been faithful. And just as I have said, let every man take decision as the Lord directs them. So if I have to advice the younger ministers today, I will say don't throw away what you are doing until your ministry grows to a point it can give you a full support before you can put your business aside to concentrate on the ministry.

Having studied immunology at the post graduate level, how do react to the belief that HIV/AIDS is a spiritual problem because it mutates and could not be tracked so far.

Well, the issue of HIV is not new because it has always been with us. That it has not been discovered does not make it new. Psalm 91 talks about pestilences that stalk in darkness, so there are many more killers that have not been identified.

When you find scientist use the word syndrome, that is what it is: they really can't find it, or put their hands on it. It's not a thing fully studied or discovered. They don't know what is going on, that is why they call it HIV syndrome.

My view on that is the same as that of other diseases like cancer, leukemia, etc. The only thing is that it came to be sexually related and in a world of depravity, it cannot but gain prominence over other diseases. Hunger, famine, malaria are killing more than HIV. What do we have to say on that? Anything that compromises your immunity will kill you, so it does not have to be HIV/AIDS.

So I have heard people say we should look at HIV the way we look at any other diseases. My answer to that has been given in the scripture, the blood that has been shed on the cross of Calvary . People who have contacted it can still be healed like any other diseases.