By Ado Oyeyemi
The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has faulted journalists for allegedly misrepresenting a 2020 prayer walk, insisting that he never staged a protest against former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Adeboye said the incident, which involved him carrying a placard during a procession in Lagos, took place five years after Jonathan left office in 2015.
The cleric spoke on Sunday during the church’s November Thanksgiving service, where he expressed displeasure over reports linking the prayer walk to Jonathan’s administration.
He explained that the exercise was organised to seek divine intervention over insecurity and killings across the country, not to protest against any government.
Adeboye admitted carrying a placard during the procession but maintained that its purpose had been distorted by a journalist who failed to establish the actual circumstances surrounding the event.
He said, “True, I carried a placard. I can’t deny that. It was important. It was a prayer walk. We wanted to pray.”
According to him, the exercise followed a directive encouraging churches to organise prayer walks around their respective premises.
“The chairman said all churches should do a prayer walk near their churches. That’s what I did,” he stated.
The RCCG leader stressed that the date of the procession alone should have exposed the inaccurate report, noting that Jonathan’s tenure ended in May 2015.
“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,” he said.
He accused the journalist of twisting the facts and expressed concern that other media practitioners circulated the claim without independently verifying it.
Adeboye also questioned the failure to investigate the incident before publication, recalling lessons on investigative journalism from his exposure to journalism studies in the 1960s.
He urged journalists to establish the facts behind a story rather than rely on appearances or unverified claims.
“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.
The cleric added, “That things don’t appear as they may seem. Investigate, if you have a story, before you take it to the press.”
Addressing members of the creative industry, he lamented that nobody appeared to have checked the authenticity of the report before accepting it.
Adeboye led members of the RCCG on a prayer walk in Lagos on February 2, 2020, following concerns over rising insecurity and killings in the country.
The procession, which began at the church’s national headquarters in Ebute Meta, moved towards Atan Cemetery in Yaba before returning to the church.
The exercise followed a three-day fasting and prayer programme declared by the Christian Association of Nigeria to seek divine intervention against terrorism and other security challenges.
Photographs from the procession showed Adeboye carrying a placard with the inscription, “All Souls Are Precious to God.”
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The prayer walk took place under the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who succeeded Jonathan in May 2015.
