Apostle Emmanuel Kure is the National Secretary of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria(PFN) and visioner, Throneroom Trust Ministry in Kafanchan, Kaduna State. He spoke with reporters on the state of the nation. Sunday Oguntola was there.
Why are you still based in the north despite the Boko Haram insurgency?
I am a northerner. The day I leave the North, there would be no hope for my people. I am not afraid of being a victim of Boko Haram. I didn’t have to leave the North for Boko Haram because I am in Christ and Christ is in me. I don’t fear death.
How come such an insurgency is coming from the North? Is it actually caused by poverty as widely believed?
No, Boko Haram existed before now. This one was a political miscalculation that boomeranged. Poverty is the cause of it and it is the culture of the North. Mohammed Yusuf, who was killed, was mingling with politicians and that was why he was killed.
Why do you think they are going after Christians if you said it is political?
It is because it has become a political game. They want attention and Christians are easy to kill. That is why they went about burning churches to create attention.
What would you say about the state of emergency?
The declaration of state of emergency is what I’m not happy about because it has not gone well. Those states affected should have their governors removed because some of them are the ones creating problems in their states.
I will not be surprised if the efforts of the military to restore order are being undermined because some of the governors are not supposed to be in power while the state of emergency is declared in their states.
Will there ever be peace then in Nigeria considering the penchant, as you claimed, of the North to create crises?
Yes there can be when the patriotic ones begin to be bold. There are northerners who are patriotic. Let me tell you one of these northern patriotic people was the late president YarAdua. Sincerely, he was a very patriotic man.
Somebody like Buhari was one person I admired.I really thought at a time Buhari would be one of the saviours of this nation. He was the finest northerners ever produced but I’m beginning to have a rethink. It takes things to bring out a man. It takes provocation to bring out a man. When Buhari made that broadcast over the radio in Kaduna where he was lambasting the Federal Government about Boko Haram thing, comparing it with the late Yar’Adua’s efforts, every respect I had for him went out.
I thank God he never became the president. We would have been in trouble and I pray he never becomes the President. Any party that chooses him that party will never win any election. Let them hear that now, they will never win any election.
Even the North will not vote for him. That is not the kind of leader that we want in Nigeria. It is very unfortunate that you allow such provocations. It only means it is time for him to resign from politics before he messes up the remaining glory he has left.
It is not the Buhari we used to know. Something went wrong except if God was answering our prayers by making us see the true man because we have been praying that kind of prayer that God will begin to provoke men to show themselves and all over they have begun to show themselves and God is using that to arrange things.
Now with God removing Buhari’s age group, the younger generation can come up. If the APC really wants to give Jonathan a good fight, they should bring out a man that is truly patriotic. They should not commit the same sins PDP is committing.
How do you see his relationship with Pastor TundeBakare then?
Bakare is my friend. We know each other people even say we look alike. Bakare has a sincere heart. His thoughts about Nigeria are good and nobody can take that away from him. As a lawyer who is well articulate, he doesn’t pitch his tent without looking at the pros and the cons. There are some choices Bakare has made that I will not believe were in the perfect will of God.
I am also a prophet but what he did was conducive for that time for him. It was just the way to go to make his point. It was not necessarily in the realms of being in the will of God or not the will of God. If we understand that then we will just allow the matter to be.
Now I don’t want to comment on his relationship with Buhari. It is his choice. He is human and can make mistakes and he has the right to make mistakes. He will learn from them and grow and I will beg that we give him that chance to learn from whatever he needs to learn from and become a better person.
You were one of the priests that went to pray for the late Yar’Adua, what was your experience like?
I don’t think I want to open that now. The day will come. Maybe after this government because it is an offshoot of that government. Let us allow that for now. But the truth is that he had his own pressure, Islamic pressure too. Of course when a Christian is the President, Christians will pressurise that President. When a Muslim is the President, Muslims will pressurise but the President must be able to draw the limes and know that he is the President of everybody.
Yar’Adua tried to do that. Some of us who were priests were frustrated. Sometimes we were not allowed access until Yar’Adua himself started calling our names that we should come. There were Muslims extremists within the government that did everything to stop us at the gate even when the President sent for us before we went there and I was not the only one with that experience.
Some of the fathers will tell you the same thing. That was the first time in the history of this country that we would be stopped at the gate. That is why I am happy with President Jonathan. During Christmas, Muslims would gather to go and pay homage and he will open his doors to them. They would rejoice but in the time of Yar’Adua, they would choose only their political priests, not Christian clergies.
When you went to pray for Yar’Adua, was he still alive?
He was alive, of course. Do you think, I, Oyedepo, Onaiyekan and Professor Obaje will come out and tell you a lie that he was alive when he was dead? Do you think we would do that and lose our salvation? Everybody knew I will not be part of that.
The impression Nigerians had was that it was his dead body that was brought from Saudi Arabia
Well, I don’t know whether it was a dead body I shook. I shook a hand that stretched itself. If it was dead, I needed to have cast out some demons but I never saw a dead body. He was frail but he was not dead.
Did he recognise you?
He didn’t have enough time to start recognising people. Sometime when you go to the presidency, the protocol people will start rushing you. The most important thing was to pray for him. He was alive and tried to recognise us. He made efforts to speak. They tried to calm him down. They didn’t want him to talk but he made his efforts to speak, especially when it came to Onaaiyekan’s turn, there was recognition.
Onaiyekan was the CAN President. He had had more rapport with Onaiyekan than any of us but the essence of our meeting with him was to pray for perfect healing unto Him to bring perfect healing.
How many minutes did you spend with him?
Well, I can’t put it in minutes. I can’t remember now. It was as brief as brief. It was naturally done but it was sharp and straight to the point.
What criteria was used to select those whom you said went to pray for him?
I am just one person God arrested on the sides but the reason Yar’Adua gave for me was number one, I had given a prophetic insight into his situation for many years. I prophesied his coming to power.
He came when Atiku and other people were there. I had prophesied also how he would end if he didn’t do some things. If he didn’t put some things right, I told him his destiny. His destiny was to handle the Niger Delta crises and then hold back at that time because another kind of Book Haram was stirring itself up.
The killing had begun on the Plateau and other places. I told him part of his destiny was to bring peace to the North. He was to be like a prince of peace, a harbinger of peace to the North to sooth frayed the nerves of his fellow Muslims.
I told him it was his destiny and if he allowed the Muslims to wipe out Christians deliberately, the Lord will take his life from him. I also told him the timings when that will take place and it came to pass exactly the timings I gave.
I also told the Vice President these timings and meaning that if it works like that at that time, the Vice President would also become the President and it came to pass. Now they remembered those things and pulled me aside.
They said the reason you are here sir is if God can show mercy. Can God change these timings? It was like they felt he might not survive. Can God change these timings show mercy and they have the right to ask God. Anybody will do that and that was why they called in the Muslims. That was why they called in the Christians too.
I knew my mission. So, when I got there, I sensed that it would not happen like that and I told them what would make him escape. We were called in because they believed we have access to God and could pray some effective prayers that could solve the problems.
I think that is about all the details I could give for now.
Did you tell them the conditions that would have made him live as you hinted?
Yes I told them. I had announced at our meeting in the Sport Complex of the National Stadium Lagos that within three weeks, the Lord said they should take the late President out of the villa. They should take him to Katsina or somewhere else where he would be away. They should take him to where he would be withdrawn from the pressure and the troubles at that time because the polity was heated up.
Second, I told them to take him away from there because even if as small as mosquito bites him for once, he would die. Thirdly, I told them I saw only three weeks. So if they had taken him out within those three weeks, maybe God would have shown mercy and given him some more time. I don’t know how long because I am not God.
I was just an oracle who God used to speak for that season. I was told later, they couldn’t take him immediately and he stood there to ensure Jonathan did not take over even at the determent of his health. May be it was a tactical move. His wife had no say in the matter.
But the general impression was that his wife was the one calling the shots
Nigerian politicians are very complicated. When they know their interests will be at stake, they use you (journalists). They will keep you there to get what they want. I think she was also under captivity. That is my opinion. The press likes controversies and my opinion was that she too was under captivity by those people.
Of course, she would have wanted her husband to live; naturally, she would have wanted to remain first lady. Naturally, let us not pretend. But it was not her call. It was the call of the politicians, which included the people in the National Assembly and other Nigerians, who were calling that let the constitution have its ways. It was not her call.
