He’s the only one who knows how he came by that name. He was named Chukwuemeka Ezeugo but he adopted Rev King when he started his ministry. There was a Rev King, who captured the imagination of the world in his lifetime. Even in death, the American Rev Martin Luther-King remains a legend. By adopting his name, Ezeugo was trying to walk in the image of the original Rev King, but he lacks what it entails to do so. This is why he missed his way and misled many, who religiously believed and still believe in him.
According to Mark Anthony, in Shakespeare’s tragic play, Julius Caesar, ‘’the evil men do lives after them…’’ Though Ezeugo aka Rev King is not dead, the evil that he perpetrated resonates across the country. In his lifetime, the evil that he did is already living after him. Since the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence passed on him by the Court of Appeal and a Lagos High Court for murder, the feeling in town is that he should be executed immediately. Where two or more are gathered the discussion is on when will Rev King be executed? His neighbours, especially, do not pray that he should ever come back. Why is a ‘man of God’ so hated by his neighbours?
This is the question I have been trying to find answer to since Rev King’s travails began 10 years ago. Rev King is the General Overseer (G.O) of the Christian Praying Ministry (CPM) on Ugo Unabuife Street in Ajao Estate, Lagos. He held sway in the neighbourhood where he turned himself into the lord of the manor. He oversaw everything that went on in that area. He was not only the G,O of CPM, but also of Ugo Unabuife, where he is seen as a terror of a pastor. Rev King was a different kind of pastor. He was in a class of his own; he was not in the class of the late Rev King whose name he corrupted to perpetrate evil.
It is ministers like the killer-Rev King that give the real men of God a bad name. Rev King, if he was true to his calling, should be winning souls for God and not taking the lives that he cannot create. I have not ceased wondering how his kind of preacher is able to attract thousands of followers, but then is religion not said to be the opium of the people? No matter how bad a pastor is, he will always get those that will follow him. Like, they say, attracts likes. This is the case with Rev King. He may have the gifts to preach the word; speak in tongues and prophesy, but he misapplied them. He knew the Word but he was not a doer of the Word. He replaced the Word with his own rules, which he applied in dealing with those who called him ‘’daddy’’.
Yes, he is their ‘’father in the Lord’’, their ‘spiritual father’, so to say, but he was not spirit filled. He was not a father in the true sense of the word to his many disciples. He treated his ‘’children in the Lord’’ as slaves and a master-servant relationship existed between them. He flogged them at will; threw things at them in anger and even set them on fire if he so desired. One day, he overstepped his bounds and he found himself in the trouble, which earned him a death sentence right from the high court to the Supreme Court. What kind of G.O is he that he will set his church members on fire? Is that the way to correct a child? The Good Book says ‘’train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it’’. This G.O did not imbibe this teaching.
Of course, we should not spare the rod in order not to spoil the child, but that is not to say that we should beat a wayward child to death. We should feed them with words, which they should keep in their hearts. A godly priest will not have acted the way Rev King did when six of his followers – Chizoba Onuorah, Vivian Ezeocha, Jessica Nwene, Kosisochukwu Ezenwankwo, Chiejina Olise, and the late Ann Uzor – allegedly committed fornication. Indeed, the Good Book frowns at fornication, but it does not say that we should kill fornicators and a G.O is expected to know that. A G.O is not expected to fly into a rage over every matter; he should be seen keeping his head where others are losing theirs.
An overseer, the Good Book says, ‘’must be above reproach, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money…he must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and the devil’s trap’’. Rev King did not take heed and he fell into disgrace and the devil’s trap. See where it has landed him – the death row. The Supreme Court has affirmed that he should be executed for the murder of Uzor, the only one who died among the six persons he set on fire on July 22, 2006. It is just a matter of time before the execution of this verdict, which has become a subject of discussion worldwide. Many of his brainwashed followers believe that he will not be executed, but many who have tasted of his so-called terror are praying for a speedy execution of the verdict.
He can only be saved if Governor Akinwunmi Ambode decides to temper justice with mercy. But Rev King’s reputation in his neighbourhood does not show that he deserves such mercy. Besides his gullible followers, and perhaps, family members, none of who has, of now, spoken on his fate, no other person is praying that he should be spared. Rev King has reached the end of the road. His fate should be a lesson to other pastors, who believe that they are larger than life. No matter how big they think they are, they should bear in mind that they are not God. If he had been a good pastor, his fate may have been different. But as he made his bed, so he will lay on it.
Free the girls now!
ON Monday night, three schoolgirls were abducted from the Anglican Church-owned Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary (BMJS) in Ikorodu, Lagos. Their abduction brings back the sad memory of the Chibok girls, who were kidnapped in similar circumstance from their school in the wee hours of April 14, 2014. The Chibok girls are yet to be found. This should not be the case with these BMJS girls. We should all rally round their families, the school, the government and the security agencies to get them back. We should not allow the abductors to have the last laugh. No, never. If they know what is good for them, they should let the girls go now.
