By JOSEPHINE IGBINOVIA

As a young girl, she discovered her gift of speaking in tongues and prophecy at a time when she knew virtually nothing about such things as she was born into an Anglican church family.  Fate had its way, and today, Bishop Chioma Grace Dauji is the Founder/Presiding Bishop of Amazing Grace Pentecostal Church in Lagos.

Here, Bishop Dauji who is also the Executive Director of Amazing Grace Foundation, an NGO in the vanguard of catering for prison inmates, widows and orphans, shares with Vista Woman her passion for serving God and humanity, particularly her work with prison inmates.

Her words:

I had been into charity work right from when I was a young girl. I think I inherited the trait from my mother. At her burial, about nine children were seen crying at her grave. It was when I inquired that I found that they were some of the children she had been training. I immediately consoled them, and made up my mind to take charge of their welfare.

Also, when I was in the boarding house, I always shared my provisions with those pupils who had little or nothing. My parents had to scold me at a point when they observed that I was frequently demanding for provisions.

Recently, Amazing Grace Pentecostal Church commissioned a multipurpose hall at the Kirikiri Female Prisons in Lagos.  We have a centre at the Medium security prison where the inmates are trained in various vocational skills. To keep inmates busy so that the vulnerable ones wouldn’t have the time to acquire unholy habits from the hardened ones, since they are sometimes placed together, we established the Amazing Grace Football Club.

Bishop Grace Dauji

There are people who are first timers in the prison and who may have got there due to a minor offence. Putting such persons in the same cell with an armed robber who has been to the prison several times is simply making the first-timer more vulnerable to crime.

They may be influenced to want to join deadly robbery gangs by inmates who are unrepentant criminals. In developed countries, they have what they call ‘Rehabilitation Centres’, where  first-timers/minor offenders are sent to. There they counsel and educate them When they come out, they are taken to places where they could do community work.

The prison is actually supposed to be a place for correction; not for condemnation. The opposite was what we had in our prisons years back, but today, I’m happy that they are gradually becoming a place for correction. We cannot depend on government alone for the transformation of prisons. I think more non-governmental organizations should take the reformation of our prisons as part of their responsibilities.

As part of our work, when inmates have finished serving their jail terms, we counsel them against further criminal activities so that they do not go back to crime out of frustration. In fact, our ministry takes prison ministry very seriously. When the federal government carried out the last prison decongestion exercise, Amazing Grace Foundation, was given 45 inmates and my church too was given 45 as well to look after.

We gave them accommodation for them within our church premises where we looked after them, trained them in rewarding skills, as well as teach them the word of God. We did this until we are able to reconcile them with their families. But the problem is that not all families are willing to accept them back into the family.

That’s bad! Why should parents reject their own children when they have been assured that they’ve changed? The truth is that the rehabilitation process will be easier with the cooperation and collaboration of the parents! With love and forgiveness from all sides, more ex-inmates would turn new leaves. I say this because over the years, I’ve observed that what most of these people really lack is love.

This lack of love is predominantly responsible for their turning to crime. Some of them do not actually want to be in crime, but the problem is that they have nobody to love and advise them. I’ve also noticed that so many of them are products of broken homes where love is sometimes lacking!

So,  the only way to help them is to love them. This way, majority of them will not return to crime. Some could be stubborn, anyway, and such ones hardly end well. For instance, there was one that we did our best for, but who still made up his mind to go into crime. Eventually, he was killed during one of his armed robbery operations.

My advice to young people is to learn to work hard. Wealth has never and will never come in one day. Remaining in crime is very destructive because only God can give true and lasting success!

Apart from working with inmates, we also cater for widows and orphans in diverse ways.

My goal is to make sure everyone comes to the realization of who God is. That way, I will be happy. I love preaching salvation, and I will not stop. My desire is to build a church that is totally committed to Jesus Christ. Even when I’m not around, I make sure my ministers endeavour to preach salvation because we cannot afford to miss heaven after acquiring all the good things of life by the help of God.

I’m from Imo State, but was born in Port-Harcourt. My husband is however from Kaduna State. I am a graduate of Accounting. I worked briefly as an Accountant and went to the US with my husband after getting married. We returned to Nigeria in 1985; with the two children we had there. I’ve got five children now. I later went to Bible school when it became apparent that God wanted me to work for Him.

I actually started by ministering under bridges. From there, we got a place given us by a lady who felt God had used us to touch her life. It was later on that we got our own place.’