By Charles Okogene
This story I am about to tell, I have told it before; and I will not stop telling it till ‘I rest in peace’ apologies to the original copyright owner.
The story is about Primate Elijah Ayodele of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church somewhere in Oke-Afa area of Lagos State.
To cut a very long and windy story short, I was one of the first journalists, if not the first scribe, to report his prediction in a widely circulated national newspaper, the great Daily Times Plc., of old to be precise.
Ayodele had brought a press release titled ‘warnings to the nation’ containing a caution to the late Kudirat Abiola, the then wife of MKO Abiola, to perish his loud campaign for the validation of her husband’s mandate freely given to him by Nigerians during the 1993 presidential election because death was knocking on her door; but Kudirat was adamant; and months after the prediction, the crazy, trigger happy Rongers’ bullet fell the beautiful lady in Lagos.
That was it. Ayodele became an instant celebrity, a sought after seer and he has not looked back ever since, instead, he went about doing good to all classes of people irrespective of domination.
Every February 14 (Valentine Day), which is his birthday, became a feast day. A day he empowers both the have and have not with food items, money, household appliances, Keke Marwa, commuter buses, cars. This writer was even a beneficiary last year for a story he wrote about the seer in 1993. He has empowed widowers, paid their rents, built houses for others, paid school fees and awarded scholarships to indigents students just as he has been paying monthly salaries of some Yoruba Nollywood actors. He has taken it upon himself to construct the road leading to his church from the Oke-Afa Canal where many perished during the Ikeja Cantonment Bomb Blast for the use of members of his church and the residents of those that live close to the church.
Today, the social media is agog following the opening of a super market where he sells food items at rock bottom prices to cushion the effect of the hardship in the land brought about by the federal government’s removal of subsidy on petroleum products.
Tagged ‘Palliative Market’, the supermart was inaugurated last Sunday and a bag of rice, according to a statement credited to him, sells for as low as N3, 000 as against the N40+ it sells at the market.
