‘It was a prayer walk’ – Pastor Adeboye denies carrying placard against Jonathan

The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has faulted media reports linking a placard he carried during a prayer walk to former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. The cleric spoke on Sunday during the church’s November Thanksgiving service, where he accused a journalist of misrepresenting the incident and portraying him as a wicked person for allegedly carrying a placard against the former president.

Recounting how he came across the report, Adeboye said he was initially amused by the claim. “Recently, somebody wrote in the papers, or said somehow, ‘Pastor Adeboye is a very wicked man. After all, we know that not too long ago, he carried a placard against President Goodluck Jonathan,’” he said. While admitting that he carried a placard, the cleric insisted that the exercise was a prayer walk and not a protest against Jonathan.

“True, I carried a placard. I can’t deny that. It was important. It was a prayer walk. We wanted to pray,” he said. He explained that the exercise followed a directive asking churches to organise prayer walks around their premises. “The chairman said all churches should do a prayer walk near their churches. That’s what I did,” he said. Adeboye further argued that the date of the exercise contradicted the report’s suggestion that he carried the placard against Jonathan while he was president.

“But I carried the placard in 2020. Jonathan ceased to be president in 2015. I carried the placard five years in the second term of Buhari,” Adeboye said. He accused the journalist of distorting the facts and criticised the failure to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident before publishing the report. “But a journalist twisted it. I said, I did what I did in 2015.

And everybody swallowed it,” he said. The RCCG leader also recalled his exposure to journalism studies in the 1960s, saying he was taught the importance of investigative journalism and verifying information before publication. “I remember in those days in the Department of Journalism, when you go there and you take a course, they talked about something called investigative journalism,” he said.

He added, “That things don’t appear as they may seem. Investigate, if you have a story, before you take it to the press.”