By Cletus Opukeme
I guess many of you knew what happened to me in 2020 shortly after (fake) COVID-19 in the country. In the course of my investigative journalism which I exposed massive billions of naira looting in NDDC during the reign of Senator Godswill Akpabio as supervisory minister and those affected and offended with my report chased me with assassin policemen and I went underground for barely two years.
During my underground stay, I faced serious financial challenges as I dropped my phone and sim to dislodge their tracking devices.
My wife reported to her pastor to seek a spiritual solution. I was invited by the pastor to attend his Sunday programme for a special prayer session. You know I don’t go to church. But due to incessant disturbance, I reluctantly dressed up and followed her to Church, a popular church in Warri. Immediately the pastor saw us, he stopped his sermon and faced me…. ”Church here is Mr. Cletus a famous journalist”” He continued ” But today he cannot pay his children school fees and is barely feeding. The enemies are at work. A woman from his family has covered his glory with a black cloth. He (referring to me) needs deliverance and a special prayer session” He concluded.
Then, he commanded the congregation to do an intermediary warfare prayer against the demons in my family. I was so embarrassed that one thing came to my mind. Was it a setup between my wife and her fake pastor? Asking these demented ,indolent and ignorant congregation to pray for a strong investigative journalist who rejected a huge sum of money from NDDC and decided to expose their financial misgivings? Haba! I said ” This is why I don’t like fellowship with them’. There is so much nonsense in Nigerian modern day Christianity. It scares many credible and real thinkers from joining them”
If very strong men like us allowed these ”god of men’ to be manipulated, who else in this country shall escape this crazy wealth seekers called ”miracle”
To be precise, there is hunger in the land and these God of men anchored on the high level of poverty to witch-hunt and manipulate their gullible congregation.
To be strong like me, you must accept fate, poverty, prosperity,sickness and believe that death too also exist. I stopped going to Church and that did not take away my creator, Almighty God. To go to church and allow conmen who disguise as ”god of men” to manipulate you with messages that are selfish and deceptive. I am now at peace with my life since I dumped them. Being a good man has nothing to do with religion.
If I die tomorrow my people should give me Ijaw traditional burial and not Christian burial because I have disowned that cult. I was initiated to go to church by my parents as a child. Have you studied Nigerian Christianity in the ” die die’ pentecostalism during midnight prayer sessions called ” AllNight” Do you watch carefully what some of the churches do? There is no difference between cultic practices and some churches.I know my photos are in many churches from my household (wife) who believed that I belong to a cult group for not going to church with them, unknown to her that my God never abhors idleness and loves strong and creative people. Prayer alone has not solved any problem in the world. The world is standing because of inventors and other scientists and not prayer warriors.
However, after the service at home, I confronted my wife that her pastor said a woman was holding my finances and that she is a woman and so she should reopen my finances. She reacted angrily and picked her phone and reported me again to her pastor over my allegation on her. Although, her pastor didn’t mention names. But I just wanted her to know that pastors like her own have divided many families with false accusations of witches.
Here is the main story, I was in my hideout from 2020,2021 mid 2022 in the weight of heavy hunger. I discovered my hidden talent as welder wey back shortly after my secondary school education in Ogulagha Forcados terminal.
I said, ” How do I continue in this dirty Nigerian journalism that those accused of corruption are moving freely with police escorts while the innocent journalist is running from pillar to post? That Is good enough for me to say good bye to journalism and join politics. But then, another thought came, becoming a politician from my ward to become corrupt after being elected or given a political appointment? This is significant, many politicians actually didn’t have a corrupt mindset. But the system made them to join as the saying that ‘if you can’t beat them you join them” I said No. Then, what else? The mystery unfolded to go back to my earlier profession of pipeline welding job was quite pretty. I asked again. How could you join the pipeline job after abandoning it for over two decades? Should I go back and register again workshops for few months to straighten my hand again? The answer was not good. Then what?
A bright thought came ” Sell your car which you have not been using due to security reasons” Yes, a good idea and I called my mechanic to come to my house and drive the long parked car to his workshop and put 4litre gallon written for sale. I did the following morning by inviting my mechanic as to how to sell the car and use the proceeds to buy industrial welding machine to proceed with my private rehearsal of industrial welding training right in front of my compound using my water tower which is made up with steel pipe (not galvanized pipe) to get ready to change the dirty Nigerian journalism profession.
Behold! it worked out after a short period of training and I approached the Nigerian Welders Association (Warri) zone B Delta state chapter. They received me and I was recommended for a pipeline test and as God would make it, I passed the test. Since then. I have been changing works and the condition gets better again without praying and fasting or sow seed of faith to the pastor with the leftover after hiding for the love of my country.
In Nigerian Christianity today, for God to bless you, you must pay money to attract a good blessing. In their postulation, the higher your payment of money, the higher your blessing. But that is a lie. I have received God’s blessings in so many ways.
In 2010 shortly after my University education, I got a job in far away United Kingdom as a journalist. One, I have not fasted once and paid tithe in my life. I got the UK job through Internet without an application and recommendation. The job took me about seven years to report for them from Nigeria. To shock you, my two buildings are from the dollars proceeds from my UK job and other assets . All these are miracles without a pastor or prophets.
Miracles came in unexpected way. You can call it divine Providence. No one should claim invoking God to cause a miracle. Miracles are mysteries beyond human understanding. God does miracles in his own thinking, not because one is so perfect. Miracles are exclusive with God. Nobody commands God to perform a miracle.. If I tell you that miracles happen every religion. There are miracles in African traditional religion, Muslims, Hinduism and so on. One thing you must know, there is a big difference between miracle, magic and sorcery. All these claimed miracles under camera are magic and sorcery. God will allow you command him to display his power under camera and these persons they claimed to have healed in the full glare of camera suffer and died after sometimes. That is sorcery. God miracles are permanent and nobody knows when such happens.
My survival from the hands of my assassins too is a miracle. Who prayed to provoke God to kill my pursuers as it was in the time of the Egypt Pharaoh, Moses and other Israelites in the red sea? Oh! you were not told that the seven Bayelsa policemen who were killed in Ughelli by SARS were those assassins paid to kill me?
Their plan was that after arresting me as Nigerian policemen under the guise of Abuja police force headquarters and they carry out the dirty job on their way? They were shot dead precisely on July 18th, 2020 and the rumour came as ”police kill police in Ughelli. What a miracle bigger than that? I was already a dead man, a walking corpse in 2020. But God turned around the table for them and they died by their own guns.
Oh, miracles are not exclusive right for pastors,prophets and Christianity only. They came and on that fateful day June 26th. 2020, I told myself ” The NDDC story is just five days and so do not go public, you remember what the British journalist told you in Abuja about being an investigative journalist’ and your personal safety and security? ‘ Yes. I declined going to the office and exactly that day the assassin rogue policemen visited dressed in Nigerian Police uniform stormed our Warri NUJ office and demanded for the head of Cletus and they told them he was not around. Then they forced about six other journalists to their waiting van and dumped them in Warri Area Commander’s cell, deceived them that they were from Abuja police force headquarters. The Commissioner of police then called IGP and he told him that no policemen were disperse to Delta state and any other state on that fateful date of their raid of Warri NUJ office.
This story is not meant to say God does not exist or all pastors are fake.What it meant to teach is that your destiny is in your hand and not your family members, your pastors or leaders of your country.
My love for journalism made me not to abandon the job as most times in hotline welding operations, I still picked up my phone and write stories to keep my website busy, though it is not as strong as before as I am in between two opposite challenging jobs welding / fabrication and journalism. I don’t know which one is side hustling as both are so dear to my heart I give all the glory to God for helping me with wisdom to use my predicament to my upliftment.
Opukeme writes from Warri, Delta state.He is the publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Daily Watch
