By Chioma Gabriel, Deputy Editor and Sam Eyoboka
JENNIFER Madike! Yes, the same ravishingly beautiful Lagos socialite who easily became the erstwhile drug czar and Rivers State governor, Police Commissioner Fidelis Oyakhilome’s Achilles heel.
She was in our corporate headquarters in Apapa, Lagos recently, a very transformed 54-year old woman, still looking beautiful. She was driven into our premises in a white Toyota Urvan bus, she donated to the women’s ministry of her church, the Spirit and Life Bible Church with headquarters in Benin City. Now a pastor, who now talks and preaches Jesus at any given opportunity.
All her efforts, though, to sell her new found name, Pastor Rejoice, had not made the needed appreciable success.
It was a compelling battle to get her to reflect on her past, if only to teach some lessons to the growing army of young girls in our campuses today, who are currently on the fast lane.
The pair of Chioma Gabriel and Sam Eyoboka managed to get her to reminisce of her past and what she is doing currently after we told her to “compare your new life with the old one and allow our young people learn from your experience.â€Â Excerpts…
How was it then and how is it now?
I can’t even imagine how I was living at that time. It must have been hell, character wise. Today, I have a lot of contentment, I have peace. I am serving God with everything that I have.
I love this God. I’m not looking at my circumstances, I don’t look at situations anymore. The quality of life that I’m living now is what is bringing me all the good things of this life.
The quality of life in the sense that when you’re talking about holiness, purity, righteousness, without which we can’t see God. I’m working out my salvation.
Before now, I was used to youthful exuberance. At that time, not knowing who I was then, not being able to lay hands on people at that time. I will say I didn’t have a sound mind.
When you talk about sound mind, talking about Christ, salvation. When those things are not there, you become a terror, everything is all crisis. But in Christ, there’s a kind of confidence that you have.
I believed in the existence of God; but when it comes to really appreciating the existence of God, you discover that it was lacking.
Look into all the churches, you’ll see that people are not really living what the Bible says, because they are not living the Word. They cannot appreciate the quality of life I’m talking about. Even as a Christian, a lot of churches are not obeying the Word.
When you look into the congregation, you’ll see a character of the General Overseer. When you look into the Church, you see the character of the person, but when you really look at them, their lives do not express what Christ stands for.
What was the driving force behind the then Jennifer?
(Laughs). I’ve said it many times as it is. I’ve been counselling a lot of women and when they come, I tell them the truth of who I was.
When you are not living your life according to the Word of God, of course, the driving force will be the devil. When you look inwards, you will see that you’re the manifestation of the devil, if you’re not obeying the Word of God.
The only way a young person can have peace and enjoy the quality of life I’m talking about is surrendering his/her life to Christ.
When you say doing things right, what do you mean?
Like a young girl, for instance, then I was going out with a married man. When you’re doing that you are working against the Word of God, so there will be curses that follow that kind of disobedience. When you’re disobedient to God’s Word, you are cursed.
Even after I’ve gotten married, I still went out believing that I am beautiful, I have everything, everybody is looking at me. There is a force that is controlling you, making you to just depend on yourself instead depending on God.
You’re in disobedience to God’s Word. I was in disobedience, and because of that, going out with a married man…that’s why I went through what I went through. I’m just telling you the truth.
What was the driving force? Was it the beauty at that time or something else?
One, was the beauty. I got carried away with my beauty. I was very beautiful, and then of course, everybody will be telling you, you’re very beautiful.
That got into my head. That was the driving force, number one. Even when I was married, I still felt I was beautiful.
And at the end of the day, you’re heading towards destruction. I was not reading the Word, I was not going to church, I didn’t believe in any other thing. Let me tell you what happens when you’re dating a married man; when you’re dating a married man, you open door ways to demons.
It’s like a young girl that is not married committing fornication. Why did God say we should not commit fornication? He said so, for our own good.
When you do that, you open doorways to demons to come into your life and start destroying you. And once there’s demon inside of you, you become self destructive. The thoughts you’re thinking start moving you towards self destruction.
Girls do all kinds of things and they think they’re cool….
Number one, you’re in a world where there are laws. When you are disobedient to those laws, everyone that is committing fornication, adultery knows they are working against God.
The sinner doesn’t often know he/she is living in sin. You feel that you’re on top of the world.
At that time I was like that. In my own case, I knew that there were certain things in my life that were not right.
There’s no human being that doesn’t have God inside of him/her. We all have conscience.
There are certain business deals I will do, I know that I’ve really done bad but I’ll just say that’s the way of life.
But business is business, they say…
No, every human being on this earth, God created us with conscience. If somebody says he’s living wrongly and he doesn’t know he’s dong that, he’s a fool. Let us be realistic about these things.
There’s no way you steal and you don’t know you have done wrong. Some people do it and use the Bible to support themselves. We all know the truth.
I personally knew the truth, because I remember then I don’t go to native doctors, I don’t go to Celestial Church. I just believed in the power of the mind. I was reading books on the power of the mind, Seven doors of the mind.
Are you saying you were using your mind to control people?
Not that I was using my mind to control people. If I go for a meeting now, I will visualise the meeting, I will see what the meeting will look like before I go in for that meeting.
Like coming to this place, I will visualise the person I’m coming to see in my mind’s eye. After visualising the meeting, I walk into the meeting and it works out exactly like that, the way I wanted.
I never believed the way to any church. I was a kind of person that believed that I had to depend on myself for everything. My father was a professor who never had money and I wanted to have everything.
Your visit to the Sultan of Brunei…
As a top model they asked me; ‘who do you want to see?’ I told them the richest man in the world. Because that was what I wanted. You have to depend on something. It’s either you depend on your mind, or you depend on God, or occultism.
You can’t function without believing in something. And we depend on voices. Without voices, you can’t get up. There has to be a voice that tells you something before you act. It’s either the devil or God, or yourself.
Without voices, you can’t move. And that’s why God wants us to depend on His voice. In yoga, the first thing you have to understand is that the exercises open doors in your mind.
Once you’re doing the exercise, at a point, through your imagination, you can start doing the exercise. With that, you open doorways to different types of demon to enter. When they now enter, then you’ll start the meditation.
There was a day my brother took my car and drove away, and I got angry and the car had an accident.
It can get to that point where you become so powerful in the spiritual realm. But that kind of power is not the real one. When you’re practicing yoga, you have nothing to meditate upon except wickedness, your plans, your wordily things, the way you want to see yourself, and then how you can manipulate people.
Please share that experience…
In yoga, you can meditate with your head, or your two legs up against the wall. In the demonic world, you’ll see a lot of people walking with their heads down and their legs up. Yoga is very deep.
People don’t know. When you start yoga, you’ll think it’s just some form of exercise to slim you down. Once you start, you’ll discover that you can’t leave it again.
At that time I was importing a kind of meat from India, made with soya beans. You’ll discover that you go into so many things, doing that and at the end of the day, there’s nothing. All these things, wanting to have everything, like when I saw the richest man in the world, I didn’t see anything in him. Everything on his table was gold, all the glasses.
It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen then. Looking at these things now, I just saw the man as a very miserable man. He had two wives then, but these two wives were giving him hell.
Did he give you any valuable gift when you went to see him?
I don’t want to talk about the gift. Of what use is it? Don’t consider what he gave me as anything. I thank God for this ministry that I am in.
There’s no ministry like this. This is a church where you are taught the Word of God in such a way that you become totally delivered from the things of this life. I’ve lost my taste for acquisition of things. All those things don’t really matter to me.
But you still do business?
I do my business. I supply diesel to banks, but it’s not about money anymore.
The Bible says teach a child the way he should go and when he grows, he won’t depart from it. Will you say your parents did that?
As at the time, my parents what they knew, they did it. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Catholicism but I just knew my parents were not studying the Word.
Train up a child in the way he should go; they never knew about all that. They never knew that they had to put that into practice. To be able to impact your children in that way, you have to practice the Word. A lot of us hear the Word, yet we don’t practicalise it.
You won’t say that they didn’t try…
They tried but the thing is that I came into this world very different. Very different in the sense that I was just different, I was very quiet and cool as a child. I can wear a dress to school and come back with that dress neat. Everybody in my family will tell you that.
I was very kind to a fault. Everybody knew there was something different about this child. I was very complex. I was no daddy’s girl or mummy’s girl.
Are you the only child?
No. I’m the first born of three. I was very deep as a child. I did a story on rape, about two girls raped by their father. I was just very deep and never really wanted people to know who I was on the inside.
I was just somebody that wanted to become somebody. I remembered when my father died, my mother was carrying me, I was just a baby then. I was just watching my mother singing and crying at the sometime.
I sang a song to my mother. My mother was shocked. I just felt at this time it’s just nothing. It was like a stronghold made me not to take things seriously.
Did your father play any role in some of these things?
My father lived throughout in the university, a decent environment, there was no way you could mix with anybody anywhere.
But you had friends in school?
Yes, but I was on my own. Even when I got married, it was from the secondary school.
What made you get married that early?
Why I married at that age was because I felt I might not live long.
Why will you feel that way?
I don’t know. That’s the truth.
But you’re up to 50 now.
I’ll be 54 this year. That’s why if not that I became a Jesus woman, I won’t be alive. I’m just telling you the truth.
Being a Jesus woman kind of made me know that I have a purpose on this earth. I’ve been able to relieve a lot of things. I don’t get attached to things of this life anymore. I feel that its all just nothing.
Even the Bible says that you can live your quality life.
No. People can say, but how do people practicalise it. I’m talking about practical Bible, reality of the Word of God. If you are living according to the Bible, you’ll be able to serve God unconditionally.
I said I’m happy seeing my grand child. I’m alive to se my grand daughter. I have three grand sons. I appreciate God in my life. I’m not looking at any other thing, I’m just looking at what God can do.
Looking at the fact that even though I thought I would not live up till this moment, God, in His mercy, has kept me for a purpose. I didn’t take life seriously, so I felt that everybody will just go like that. As a child, that thing stayed.
Are you saying that before you got married, you didn’t have a boyfriend?
Of course, at that time, you do all that. But like I said, personally, I was quite different. My mother being a teacher, she brings books. I started reading at a very tender age. I learnt about sex transmutation at a very tender age.
What is sex transmutation?
You know you need energy for everything. The strongest energy or force is the sexual force in the sense that if a man catches his wife with another man, he can kill the man. A woman can lie and do everything to go and meet somebody she wants to sleep with or meet somewhere.
So, that kind of energy is the kind of energy you don’t waste. You can waste it having sex. In my own case, I decided at the age of 17 to transmute all into creative energy.
At that time, I felt I could transmute all into creative energy and channel it towards creating wealth. That was why at a very young age, I was thinking of how to become big.
I was not afraid of death then. Even when I went home now to start our ministry in our village, to discuss with my mother’s relatives. My mother’s elder sister said something to my mother that ‘this your daughter has always been very different.’ They just said we’ll join you.
I was not afraid of death in the sense that I felt that the only two realities known to me were, matter and energy. Neither matter nor energy can be destroyed or created. It can only go through some transitional processes.
I’m going to win souls somewhere. I must make sure that the souls are taken care of, are cared for, are made to understand the reality of practicalising the Word of God.
I see you as somebody who have been at two extremes. You have been into the world of metaphysics in your early age and today, you are at the other end of the spiritual divide. Will you say there are things you did when you were young that you regret today?
Of course! Everybody makes mistakes. We are never perfect. I just look at God as my parent who will never throw you out.
I made so many mistakes in my life. So many of them. Number one, marrying too young, when you’re not matured. You don’t know what marriage was all about. I was 17.
I thought marriage was about boyfriend and girlfriend. Number two, not knowing God at that time. The truth is that nobody came to me to talk to me about God.
When you talked about early marriage, you attempted another relationship after your travails prison. Will you say that too was a mistake?
Of course. I didn’t listen to God at that time. When God is not in a relationship, you’re wasting your time in that relationship.
When you were in the prison, the kind fellow was visiting you…
And God spoke to me and said, when I sent Elijah to the widow, did Elijah marry the widow?
So, you divorced the second man?
Of course.
You had a baby for him?
I was above baby age. My last child was already in the university.
At the time they accused you of forging the signature of Mrs. Maryam Babangida. You must have been close to her or the Babangida family?
I was not. Don’t mind them, they were just doing all kinds of things at that time. It was just a set up.
What is your relationship now with the Oyakhilomes?
We are good friends, now we have Christ. It’s about heaven now. Time is running out on everybody.
They don’t know that God is reorganising, rearranging and distributing the wealth. It’s the money in the system He will reorganize, rearrange and redistribute.
Have Oyakhilome’s children forgiven you?
I don’t have any problem with Oyakhilome or his children. God does not remember the past.
Isn’t there anything like restitution in the Bible?
There is. Am I owing them?
Is any of your kids living in a way that a child ought not to live?
My children, they will still have to know God, because even at that time, I didn’t know the Bible. But now, it’s prayer. You have to start praying that your children will get born again.
Is their father still alive?
No, he’s dead.
But if you’re not getting money from the men…
Getting the money in the sense that, business. You enter into somebody’s office, tell him what you want; he gives you what you want, you do your business. I’ve told you that I knew about sex transmutation a long time ago. I don’t waste time sleeping with a man. What for?
What if they are asking for it?
When a man is asking for sex, of course, you’ll know what to do. When a man comes to you for sex, make him understand that it’s not all about sex.
There’s more to life than sex. A lot of people will feel affection for you, just natural affection, devil will now make them start thinking it’s sex.
You have to make a man understand selling everybody, if you do it now, you’re destroying yourself. So, in this ministry, if you commit adultery, it’s like death.
In marriage now, a lot of people go through all kinds of things, they don’t know what to do…
I’ve always told most women, if you want your marriage not to last in this world system that I’m looking at, the way the world is going. Every woman now should be patient before you marry.
Don’t marry for selfish reasons. A lot of us marry because ‘I want to marry a doctor’ and of course, I got what I wanted. I wanted a doctor, I married a doctor. You want this, you get it, for your own selfish reasons because that’s what you want, if you don’t want it, it’s gone.
Was it really you who decided to marry the doctor or your parents wanted you to marry doctor?
My mother was against it. My parents were talking about family and so many things that I later saw. You know parents see, they tell you things. My parents told me everything but I didn’t listen. At the end of the day, you start blaming yourself.
You were in love…
Now, I don’t know whether it was love. Because you see a man that has it, you say it’s love. You see somebody who’s secured where you’re insecure, you say it’s love. One has to be careful about this love issue.
So you can remarry?
No.I’m married to Jesus now. I am complete in Him. I can’t be talking about earthly marriage now.
I’m too busy for God for earthly marriage. I want to complete my assignment and go and join the Lord. All of us on this earth are on assignment but most of us have not realized it.
What most people don’t know is that God is recolonising the earth through the Godhead Prayer Ministry. We are supposed to be exactly like the Lord in everything.
That’s what we should be. We are not perfect. We are to be perfected the day we meet the Lord. You become one like Him.
But you still have emotional feelings…
Nothing. That aspect of my life is dead. The truth is that, that aspect is dead.
Is that not a medical condition?
(Laughs). No. Growing up, at that time, nobody was cautioning me about how I dress, because I can really dress.
There was a day my mother came in and saw shoes upon shoes and she said what are you doing with all these shoes? Then most of us, we thought that was the in-thing, make money. And of that time, I never liked women that depend on men to give them things. I was like that.
You were giving the men?
No! I said I never liked women friends who will tell you a man bought me this or that. I just feel that you don’t know what you want.
But it was the men who were buying you those shoes?
No. I was making my money. I don’t depend on people. I’m that kind of person. That’s why I told you.
But you were a student then…
My dear, I’m just telling you, no man was buying me anything. No man will even look at me and want to buy me anything.
That was the way I was. I’m just telling you the truth. Any man that I know today, when they’re reading this and they’ve ever bought me anything, they will come out.
No man gives me anything. I depended on myself. That’s why I’m telling you that I am different. You can never see any woman who depends on men around, as a friend, never.
Most of the ladies who follow men follow them for the money…
I know. A lot of therm do that. But there are a lot of other women too that are put together in such a way that they know exactly what they want; they work hard for their money.
These are the kind of women that I use to appreciate. I still appreciate such women till today.
Because I know that I can always survive on my own, and that was why I had problems in my marriage because of that. Because I never wanted my husband to be the one providing everything.
I wanted to also start providing for myself, for my family. He was a doctor, he’s working. But I didn’t want to depend on him. I don’t like women that depend on men.
So, I was quite different. I will advise every mother that has grown up children, if you have a house boy in your house, watch the house boy.
If you have daughters, don’t keep house boys. If they are young, don’t keep any house boy. Even house girls too, when they are carrying babies, they do a lot of things to the baby.
They play with them?
Yes! They do all kinds of things.
I’m just telling you. One has to be prayerful. That’s why I’m saying that you have to be a Jesus woman; so that you start hearing from God. If they bring any house help to you, God will minister to you about the house help.
And when you see your child dressing, let the child understand why the child should not overdress. Make the child understand that the child has to find out why and for whom she’s dressing.
You must make that child understand. If you are beating your child, you want to spank your child, let the child know why you’re spanking. Because of the child doesn’t understand this, the child will get used to that spanking and it becomes a way of life.
The child now becomes more hardened. Children need a lot of love, a lot of prayers, a lot of Godly wisdom to be able to deal with children of these day. The children of these days are not like that time.
That time, there was no DSTV, while I was growing up, now they have DSTV to their disadvantage. They see all kinds of things, they go into the net to do all kinds of things. One has to be prayerful and be hearing from God.
Is that a plus or a minus for today’s kids?
It’s a minus. See how children are killing children in the university, in the schools in America, all over the world, you see them going, shooting, because of that game or whatever. At times, there are demons.
But knowledge is increasing…
Knowledge is increasing in what sense? Knowledge increases not to the detriment of the society. You hear that a child goes into the school and shoots 15 or more people.
That game or whatever they are playing, though my children are grown ups, parents should not allow their children get used to that thing. It’s destructive.
Is Jennifer Madike a very strict mother?
I love my kids. I want them to be my friends. I believe that it’s only through Godly instructions, that you can get them to behave the way you want.
Are you strict?
Of course, I’m discipline now, more disciplined than ever.
Disclaimer
Comments expressed here do not reflect the opinions of Vanguard newspapers or any employee thereof.