By Jemi EKUNKUNBOR
Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor is one pastor in this country today who perhaps needs no formal introduction. He shot into limelight in the 80’s with his Hour of Deli

Ayo Orit

verance TV ministry after he left the Church of God Mission under the leadership of late Archbishop Benson Idahosa to set up his own ministry, Word of Life Bible Church. Through his teaching and preaching, several souls have been led to Christ.

A pastor to many pastors, his depth of the word and open demonstration of the faith has endeared him to many. No wonder he emerged President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN). His contribution to the country was also recognised by the state when he was given a honorary merit award as Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR).

What many may not know about this man of God whose hairstyle was a hot number in the 80’s is the fact that his story reflects that of the many lost souls he has won into the kingdom of God. Unloved and left to grow up by himself, left with no choice, he took to street life. Everything that was bad became appealing for him until the hand of the Almighty stopped him. His grass to grace story as he shares with us today is a true reflection of the finished work of redemption.

What was your background like and how did you veer a little away from the straight and narrow?    Well, honestly, I don=t know if I should say I veered a little. That was the way I went and it is a part of my life that I am not proud of. I was born into a good, responsible, average family. Unfortunately, I didn=t know my father because, I was very young when he died. My mother remarried and had to move out of Nigeria. So, I was going from one uncle=s house to another. I really didn=t have a home to call my own.
I was more or less surviving on my own.

In fact, there were times when I wasn=t sure for how long I would stay in a particular house. So, my little belongings were always ready because the next morning, they could come and say, “Get in the car; you are moving.”  It was not a good life growing up like that and that exposed me to a lifestyle that was not good for me. I moved with the wrong crowd and got into drugs, alcohol and anything that was wrong – including armed robbery. It was a terrible lifestyle.

I will never forget; though one day, I was walking down the Marina, the Marina of those days with the water front and all that around 9pm, and tears were rolling down my cheeks. I think I was praying but I really didn=t know what I was doing. But, I just heard myself saying aloud, “God, if you are God, do something. Help me. Change my life. Just do something.” That was just probably for about ten minutes and then I was back to my usual self.

But, I think He heard that because, a few months later, they bundled me again to Sapele – which was surprising because it=s usually here in Lagos that they move me around. This time, I was moved back home. I got back home and less than a year later, I went to buy Indian hemp somewhere and somebody gave me a handout and invited me to a crusade and I said, “You must be crazy.

Look at me. Am I the kind of person you invite to those kinds of places?’’ I used to wear dark sunglasses at night because, my eyes were not good to look at. They were too red. So, I took off the dark sunglasses because, when people looked into those eyes, they were frightened. So, I expected the gentleman to be afraid and run away but he just looked into my eyes, smiled and said, AJesus loves you@. That was a shock to me because, I never heard anybody say that to me before. So, I took the handout and walked away. Somehow, I didn’t forget that encounter. I read the handout and I didn’t forget the date on the handout. On that day, I was half drunk but I still remembered the crusade at the stadium in Sapele – at that time.

Who came to minister?
It was Archbishop Benson Idahosa and I heard the word of God clearly for the first time. I had drugs in my pocket. Then, drugs were tablets. There was no cocaine and heroin at that time. We had all kind of tablets that we used to take and I had all that stuff in my pocket. So, when the altar call was made, I got up. A friend I went with said, AYou are stupid! What are you trying to do? People know you here.@ So, I said, “You probably don=t really know how serious this is to me.  You can stay if you want to.” Incidentally, I’d taught him everything he knew about that lifestyle.

So, I said, “There is nothing you can tell me because, I taught you. If you want to stay, you can.”
So, I went out and gave my life to Christ. My friend called me a fool and all that but I was happy. At the end of the service, I took out all my drugs. Nobody told me to do that. I did it on my own and the next day, I bought a Bible and that was the beginning of my journey till today. Interestingly, I have never looked back. Everybody said you can=t make it; you can=t last because if you look at the change, it was too dramatic. It=s difficult to comprehend that somebody would change like that.
Very interesting story I must say…

Yes, but there is a part of my story that I think you need to know and I only discovered this in 1979. I was already a pastor for quite some years. One day, I was to go abroad to the US to minister so, I went to Sapele to tell my mother that I was travelling. Then she broke down and started weeping. I said to her, I thought you=d be happy. So she said, AI=m not sad.

I just remembered something and I wonder why I have never remembered. She told me that after she had my older sister, she wanted a male child and went to church here in Lagos and prayed to God and said, “If you give me a male child, I will give him back to you. Just give me a male child@. A few months later, she got pregnant and that was how I was born.

Then, she said for the first five years of my life, I couldn’t talk and the doctors said nothing was wrong with me. I just made little noise and cried when I was hungry. She said after my fifth birthday, I just began to talk normally like nothing happened. I didn’t learn to talk or go through the process that children go through.

She forgot the prayer she prayed until the day I walked in and said I was going abroad.  Then, she remembered where it all started from. She said the reason she was crying was because, finally, it was the gospel that was taking me abroad at a time when my mates were going abroad to study or do some other things. So, that is my story and that is how I got to where I am now.

Your turn around started with two people who told you that Jesus loves you and that meant a lot to you who had grown up as a loveless child. Today, there are many children passing through that road. What would you want to say to them about that life?

Many of these men you see that look tough, they are not tough. Deep down, they are just looking for somebody who would genuinely love them. Most of them grew up without love. Some of them grew up with their parents and if you look at our society, you=d discover that a lot of parents pop out children but they really don=t care.

In fact, these children grow up on their own; train themselves. There are parents who don=t even know if their children are at home or not. So, a lot of these children that you see are troubled with insecurity; what I call reversed psychology. They are actually saying,’ love me’. They are looking for attention; for somebody to recognise that they are there.

If you look at some of the militants that have been surrendering arms, you=d hear them say,  “I want so and so person to be there when I surrender my arms”. When you really look at it, you=d see that apart from the fact that he is agitating for something, he wants to interact with somebody and he wants some people to know him. A lot of them are young men that would be as productive – if not much more productive than many people you see in our society today; if only they can connect with the right persons.

It can change a lot of things. My heart goes out to them. But at the end of the day, yes, it=s true you grew up without love, this and that happened, but it=s still your life and you have to take responsibility for it. You can=t spend your whole life making excuses, blaming everybody else. When will you say to yourself, I think I should do something with myself and with my life? I think that time must come when young people must make decisions because if they don=t, life will make decisions for them; other people will make decisions for them and they will end up where they never thought they will end up.

As I=m talking to you now, I feel like crying because, it takes me back to those days. One of the uncles I lived with, the wife used to use lukewarm water to make eba for me. Can you imagine that? I don=t eat what others eat. Mine was different. Again, I want to quickly talk to fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts and adults generally. Be careful how you deal with children.

God will hold you responsible. If nobody else does, God will. Be careful also because, you are painting a picture that is not correct in the mind of that child. This is  very dangerous. You are telling the child: this is life, take it or leave it. You are telling that chid that this is what love is, it can=t be better than this.

And, what you may not know is that the child may end up becoming someone you never thought that child would become. If Potiphar’s wife had any premonition that Joseph was going to become the Prime Minister of Egypt, she wouldn’t have done what she did. In fact, her husband became one of those working under Joseph. Now, can you imagine if Joseph was not a restrained, God fearing young man – what he would have done to Potiphar and his wife? I pray that God will help us to get it right in Nigeria.
A lot of women, today, are looking for children and in their desperation make vows and then they forget. What is the implication of not keeping such vows?

Let me first of deal with the negative side. It is important that parents, especially women, don=t be that desperate that you go to a juju house to ask for a child or anything for that matter because, you may just be asking for what will destroy you in the future. On the positive side, which sometimes can become negative as well, there are women who will go to God and ask for a child or even a husband. In their desperation, they make some vows and then forget. And, God actually comes through for them. What you don=t realise is that vows are vows. You don=t joke with vows especially that made to God.

When you read the Bible, Jephthah made a vow and he said to God, “If you give me victory, the first thing that comes out of my house, I will give it to you.” That is a very dangerous vow to make. We must be careful also how we make vows. We should not be carried away by the weight of our needs when we make vows. God gave him victory and as he came back, the first person that came out of his house was his only daughter…
If he was a Nigerian, would he keep that vow?

No, he won=t. I can assure you – and that is the problem we have here. We still do not understand the seriousness of dealing with God. Probably, we think that God is so gracious or we think we are not quite in the Old Testament days when people do the wrong thing and they die on the spot. But, like I tell people, grace is more dangerous than the law.

The reason is because, you don=t know when your grace has expired. It could expire and you don=t know and that is worse because, when the end comes, it=s going to come suddenly. So Jephthah made the vow but fortunately, he had taught his daughter well. The daughter was a God-fearing daughter and so she said, “No, if you said something to God, you should do exactly what you said you would do.” That tells me that he taught her well that when you make vows, when you say something to God, you do exactly what you say. In fact, he must have taught her that when you say anything to anybody, keep it.

Now, anybody who can=t keep his word to God can=t keep his word to anybody. And that is part of the problem we are facing. That is one of the reasons Nigeria is the way it is. Because, if you can=t keep your word to God, who would you keep it to?  You know that God is supreme, God is sovereign. God is God over everything and yet, you don=t keep your word; you are not going to keep your word to Nigerians if you get into a position of authority. You are not going to keep your word to your wife or children. So, I=d say to people, please be very careful how you make vows and if you make a vow, keep your word and God will always keep his word to you. God=s word works every time; it is man=s word that you can=t depend on.

As a man of God who was in the waiting room for a long time, what is that experience like, waiting on the Lord for a child?
I think the first thing is that waiting tests your commitment to God. It tests the depth of your relationship with God. A lot of Christians are shallow. They don=t have depth and you would only find out when life begins to throw up challenges as you go on. My mind goes to the three Hebrew boys when the king said they should bow and they refused and then they said, “Our God will deliver and even if He doesn=t, we would not bow@.

I came to a point where I was totally sold out to God. To me, it didn=t really matter if I had children or not. It got to that point and I settled that with God. I don=t think God deals with everybody that way. There are people He deals with this way, depending on your relationship with him. He sees the depth, He sees your love, He knows who you are because He said, He will not allow you to be tempted above that you can bear. So, any temptation you face in life, he knows you can bear it.

I would encourage those who are waiting to wait but not to wait in a mood of frustration; not to wait feeling discouraged; not to wait looking for who to blame. If you are waiting, just wait but wait with the right attitude; wait, believing that this God will not leave you the way you are.

While you were waiting, how were you able to sell your belief to your relations who would normally put pressure on you?
If you listen I said, initially it was terrible. I will say something I didn=t want to say. This is the first time. There was a time I went on a long fast because of this matter and I had to talk to God.

And I said to him, I just want to know where you stand on this. He has done this to me several times. He didn=t even allow me finish the fast. Somewhere in the middle, he spoke to me and he told me: “Son, I brought you into this world and I brought you into this world for a purpose. Everything I promised to do in your life, I will do@, and that settled it. I then did two things: I insulated myself from the words of people. It never affected me again from that day.

Then, I talked to most of my relations including my late mother and said, please don=t ever bring this issue up again. And, my very close relations know that when I talk like that, it is very serious. So, they had to stop. But, I knew they talked about it to themselves. That was how I survived it. It=s not easy but I believe that if we have depth in God, we can survive it.

There are many things happening now amongst pastors that shouldn=t be heard of; issues of pastors remarrying while the first wife is still alive. These pastors have become examples for unbelievers. Can the PFN discipline such pastors?

Let me make it clear that not every pastor is a member of PFN. Anybody who is outside of PFN, I have no right or power over them. What I have done is to inaugurate a disciplinary committee to do two things.

The first one is that when there is an issue, somebody has to formally bring it up in a written form which will then be submitted to the committee. It is their responsibility to look into it and submit their findings to the national advisory council where I will now table it and a final decision will be taken. It is unfortunate, but I=m being careful in making comments.

I can=t make comments and then sit down to be the judge. But, it is there in the Bible that a man and woman are married for life, especially for a pastor. That, to me, gives you double responsibility because, you have to set the standard that others should follow. If you, as a pastor, cannot set the standard, how do you handle it when others have the situation and they come to you for help? What do you do? How do you answer it? What do you do?