The General Superintendent of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has rejected viral media reports claiming that he protested against then-President Goodluck Jonathan during Jonathan's term in office. In his sermon on Sunday morning, 1 November, Adeboye stated that the action in question took place in 2020, five years after Jonathan left office in 2015. He rejected the accusations that he was a malicious man who had deliberately attacked the former president as inaccurate.
According to him, it was a purely spiritual action intended to pray against the severe insecurity and bloodshed in the country. He lamented that the false portrayal had wrongly cast him as an actor who had deliberately targeted the former president. He expressed particular disappointment that the version had been spread and accepted by the public without journalistic verification of the actual timeline and context. Adeboye said a person had claimed in newspapers or elsewhere that he was a very wicked man because he had recently carried a placard against President Jonathan.
Adeboye acknowledged that he had carried a placard. He could not deny that, he said. It was important, he said, and it was a prayer march; they wanted to pray. The action followed a joint call directed at various Christian denominations. The chairman had said all churches should hold a prayer march near their places of worship, and that is exactly what he had done.
The actual date of the march refutes the claim that his action was directed against the Jonathan government. "I carried the placard in 2020. Jonathan was no longer president in 2015. I carried the placard five years into Buhari's second term," Adeboye said. He sharply criticised the journalist who had distorted the dates and complained that the media had not conducted basic fact-checking before publication. "A journalist twisted it. I said I did what I did in 2015. And everyone swallowed it," Adeboye said.
According to the accounts, the background to the action lies in 2020. On 2 February, Adeboye reportedly led millions of RCCG members on a peaceful march through Lagos. The action was directed against the ongoing killings and insecurity in Nigeria. It was part of a joint declaration by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which called for a three-day fast culminating in a nationwide prayer march against terrorism. The appeal was addressed to the churches of the country, and the prayer marches were to take place where the congregations were based.
Adeboye's clarification thus mainly targets a confusion of timing. The 2020 action fell in the second term of President Muhammadu Buhari and, as the cleric himself emphasised, had the country's security situation as its subject. The sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, and Adeboye pointed out that a video of his address is available from the church.