Pleasures Magazine

Physically, I saw Jesus Christ twice in my bedroom - Rev. Ukpai 

Written by BANKOLE MAKINDE

Founder of Uma Ukpai Evangelistic Association Incorporated, Reverend Dr. Uma Ukpai, spoke with BANKOLE MAKINDE about how God made him perform his first miracle at the age of 10 and sundry issues affecting the polity and Christendom.

We have heard much about the many wonderful things, especially healings that God has been using you as a vessel to perform for the benefit of humanity. Who really are you?

Well, I am just an ordinary man who was fortunate to meet Christ at the age of 10 and it was not an ordinary meeting as it was dramatic in the sense that soon after a mad man came to our school and sent everybody out. I then heard God say to me that "you also can sack him", and so I commanded him. His name was Deko and the incident took place in Udohi, Ukana County Council School and the mad man rolled out of the school.

This experience frightened me, just like it frightened others; the story began to circulate and this was in 1958 and it is still circulating. We have seen God healed different kinds of people but it was not me that carried out those miracles as I was only an instrument in God's hands. Even the miracles confused and baffled me just as it baffled all other observers and so, I would not say that it was me that did it but I would say that it was God. I have seen God do what I considered to be impossible and up till now, my mind would prick me to ask if or not it was in a trance or it was real.

Ordinarily, they don't add up but I have had to keep quiet and say to myself that if it is of God, He would do another type and He has done various kinds of miracles over the years which are spread across the world. In our crusade in Umuahia, God told me the very first day of the Great Umuahia for Christ Crusade that 15 cripples would walk. I have never seen such number walked before. Even Christians from my hometown came to me and told me that if I was not sure that this would happen, then, I should not come to the crusade ground because the people would be coming to the place with their stones and Bibles. But everything happened completely and I was struck with fear.

While speaking in Abiriba, where you can call my home, God told me to ask them to bring every blind person they knew and that without prayers, those that would see, would see and people brought the blind from all over the Local Governments and out of 18 blind people brought there that day, 17 people confessed that they saw without prayers. My uncle who was a pastor asked me what this was, because, according to him, miracles could not happen without prayers and I told him

without blinking an eyelid that miracles can happen without prayers. So, I have seen miracles after miracles that I now believe that there is nothing God cannot do. There is no sickness that He cannot heal and I am blessed to know that this God is awesomely-powerful.

How exactly will you describe your relationship with God and what exact promises did He make to you?

Well, you know very many people feel God's presence only when they kneel down to pray but I feel His presence even when I am lying down and when I am walking and sometimes I hear myself talk to Him even when I am not in a prayer mood but maybe while sitting down, driving or doing other things. He is real to me and that is why we can communicate. God has said to me long ago that He would give me 100 angels wherever I went to. People who know me will attest to the fact that I travel at night. I am a night traveller and my relations are afraid that harm may come my way but I have always said to them that I have God's promises that He would protect me day and night and therefore no harm shall come to me. God has also said to me that He would provide my needs and as a result, I have never lacked anything. My wife has never asked whether I have money or not. She always would tell me whatever she needed and would ask for the money. I have seen God supply money supernaturally to me which may be difficult for others to understand.

I have seen Jesus physically eight times. Twice, He came to my bedroom in the presence of my wife but when you share these testimonies, you confuse many and you make others doubt your honesty and sincerity but these things are true. So, I have seen Him in various ways and I have learnt to trust Him and trust Him absolutely.

It is widely known that you don't have any Church of your own. But why do some men of God preside over only one branch of a Church and what is the difference between a Church and a fellowship?

Well, my calling by God was not to start a Church; I was called to hold programmes and remind churches of their need to reach out and bring in new people into the kingdom. As I said earlier, I am more of a whistle-blower or a town-crier, one that reminds Churches of their need to be evangelistic. I was called by God to bring churches together and go with them to declare their own areas, a sort of a mission field and help them harness their resources for evangelistic expression.

If I establish a church, it means that I will be competing with them and if I continue to compete with them, we cannot have mass evangelism any more. Presently, they can trust me and even in some places, we were able to mobilize 300 churches to work with us. If I begin to compete with them in establishing churches, they will not trust me or give me enough cooperation again and such a development will hinder my primary calling which is to encourage churches to reach out to the unbelievers and lead them to Christ.

How was growing up like?

I grew up in the village. There, a man who can feed his family and pay the school fees of his children is a king and a child who could eat three square meals in those days was a child from a good home. So, I would say that I grew up just like a normal child; my needs were met as I was made to eat three times a day and to change my clothes and go to school at a very tender age of four. It was a wonderful life. It was when I came to the major towns that I saw bigger houses than ours in the village and it was then that I knew the we were not as rich as those living in there. When I went to America, I discovered that there were many Americans who were richer than most of our big men in Nigeria. So, I will say that I grew up happily and it was when my father died that there was a sort of setback, yet I was able to cope and go to school. I have a certificate in Aeronautic Engineering Practice, a diploma in Journalism and I hold a degree in Theology and Divinity. If you read journalism and the sciences, I think you are informed enough to function as a man.

Most Nigerians don't even know where you are from in the country. Some say Akwa Ibom, others say you are Igbo. Where exactly are you from?

Well, I am not from Akwa Ibom State but I am still a Nigerian. It was in 1972 that God asked me to relocate here in Uyo, Akwa Ibom. The very first day I arrived Uyo, a man saw me and said that he dreamt about me and that God told him that he should give me accommodation as long as I would need it.

I lived with him for a very long time. Three days after, a woman met me and said that God asked her to give me three plots of land though I did not know what to do with three plots of land then. Six months after, a woman came to me and said that God asked her to buy me a car. These three things confirmed to me that what I heard about my relocating to Akwa Ibom State was from God and since I came here, I have never been on the wrong side of the road. But the other aspect of it is that from here to my village is only about a distance of one hour or less than that.

And where is that place?

If you go through Itu to my place in Ohafia, Abia State, it is about 45 minutes and we have the same culture as the people here and most of the words we use in my village are just the same here. In my village, we speak two languages and that is Efik and Igbo and so, when you go to the market, you find out which language your customer speaks and you speak that to him and most of the songs we sing in my place are sung in Efik. In one way, we are one people and it is only politics that must have divided us.

Sir, are you not worried that these days, most men of God are of the belief that the acronym Doctor must be appended to their names before they can be respected?

Well, when I wrote my degree script in America, I was given two certificates; one of them as a Doctoral Degree holder and that was how I got my own. I don't know how others got theirs and so, they have to defend it. When I protested that I was given two certificates even as a black man, they sent my thesis to another college which brought back the same results.

I wrote a thesis on "the truth" and they thought and knew it was excellently - written but my argument then was that they said that they assessed it but that being a black man, I couldn't have written such a colourful thesis. I think I refused to use it for four years after it was given to me but they sent the thesis to another college which brought back the same result.

Why do you think wives of men of God always prefer to be addressed as Reverend (Dr)Mrs. XYZ and working in the same church with their husbands? One would have thought that they should establish their own separate churches if actually they are of the belief that God called them too?

A man and his wife are one. God does not recognize a man and his wife as two entities. God sees them as one.

What do you think should be the role of the church in the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan?

Only the church can interpret God's code of life and only the churches are God's agents here on earth. The churches can speak for God and on His behalf. In the eyes of God, churches are His embassies. If you want to hear the will of God and know His mind, you go to churches. If you want to know about what tomorrow holds for you, you go to churches.

How do you think the Federal Government should deal with this Boko Haram issue and the spate of bombings trying to make the country ungovernable?

Boko Haram is not a big threat to the country. What God wants is justice. If any man does wrong, he should be punished because every man should give account of his life. If Boko Haram could be made to give account, they will simply pipe down. Why it looks as if they are above the law or ungovernable is because nobody is asking them to account for their atrocities against the citizenry. I want the Federal Government to ask them to account.

As a respected voice in both the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), how do you think Christians should react to the incessant attacks on churches and adherents especially in the Northern part of the country?

We Christians are doing more than we ever did before. We are protesting and are fighting and if you are conversant with the newspapers, you would have heard us from different flanks protesting the killing of Christians. I have met with a governor from the north and I complained about what he was doing to his people. I have also met with the governor of Borno State; the first line of questioning that came out of my mouth was to ask him what he was doing to his people. He defended himself and promised to rebuild all churches that were destroyed in that state. Though he has not honoured his words but he did make the promise and I travelled all the way from Uyo to make that confrontation.

What is the position of CAN on Islamic banking?

In a way, we are not opposed to Islamic banking as Christians. What we are only saying is that it is not proper for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to finance it with taxpayers' money because it is discriminatory. The Federal Government should have allowed Muslims to establish their bank if they want to, but with their own money and not with CBN's money.

CBN should tell Christians just like Muslims to build their own banks and in no distant time, Christians shall build their own bank but we will not ask CBN to sponsor us. We shall generate the money for the sponsorship and that is what we are asking CBN to do now. They should not sponsor the Islamic bank with people's money.

These days' preachers, if you have been taking notice of this, hardly preach sermons from the Old Testament but only from the New Testament. But you will notice that wherever they want to talk about the Old Testament, they only refer to Malachi Chapter 3, which makes it a compulsion for all Christians to pay tithes. Is the church now a money-spinning investment?

Well, I think that your own voice is a voice of bias because it is not possible that churches would only preach from only one passage of the Old Testament. That is not true and it is not possible. They preach all other topics but it is just that because of the bias people have, they amplify the ones they preach from Malachi but Malachi cannot be the most attractive book in the Bible and Malachi is in both the Old and the New Testaments. So, those who want to join the church should look very well before they join them.

Should men of God be involved in partisan politics at all because it is as if some of them are now becoming laughing stocks in the eyes of Nigerians?

Well, if any man of God was called by God into politics, let such a man go in there but if God has not called any man of God into politics, let the man step back and do other things. There are many ways to help government build the nation other than through politics.

What penalty should be visited on these preachers that will prophesize and everything will still come to naught and yet gullible people still attend their churches?

No punishment should be meted to any of them because their followers distrusting and disbelieving them, I think, is enough punishment. We know a prophet when what he says comes to pass. So, when a man's prophesy does not come to pass, you should know that such a person is a false prophet but whether anyone goes to his church or not depends on the individual as each person will decide for himself or herself which church to attend or not to attend.

Why do siblings of church founders always struggle to succeed them after their demise?

There is nowhere in the Bible where it is written that the son or dependants of church founders shall not inherit the father's church. Therefore, it is left to the leaders of the church to decide what they want.

Don't you think that wealthy Christians should be jealous about the manner wealthy Muslims send faithful of the religion to the holy pilgrimage in Mecca while the Christians hold on to their money?

Going on pilgrimage is a fantastic thing as it confirms and affirms that your knowledge of the Bible is true and that it exists because everything the Bible says is true. It shows you the inherency of the Bible and therefore, every State Government should send as many citizens as possible for the Holy pilgrimage in Jerusalem to confirm the words of the Lord.

What is this marriage healing conference, which you love passionately, all about?

It is about looking at marriage the way God looks at marriage and bringing out the high points of the Bible, showing people what the Bible says and that is that a day will come in the last minute when people will have itchy ears and not be willing to listen to sound doctrines. A man that is not happy with his marriage will think of changing his partner and we are saying that the Bible is opposed to it because you don't change your partner or your spouse. Instead, you change yourself because to change your partner will take you changing yourself.

What exactly do you think is wrong with this country called Nigeria and what do you think is the way forward?

When people are hardly surprised, when people lose their capacity for emotion, then, they have become lepers because a leper has no ability to feel any pain and God uses pain to correct and instruct people. When your nerves are all dead, you are as dead as the dead.

What really is called healing in Christendom?

Healing is restoration. Healing is God restoring the nerves of the leper and giving him the ability to feel things and to feel pain and feel cold. Healing is God restoring the gift He gave you at the beginning which you have lost through ill-health, through wrong companionship or through carelessness and recklessness. That is what we call healing and it is restoration which translates to God giving you what you lost.

All big men of God across the country are establishing Universities all over the place but we are yet to hear of Uma Ukpai University. Anything wrong?

Why should there be Uma Ukpai University? But there is already Uma Ukpai College of Business and Theology? We have a hospital which we established 12 years ago and then, we are building the Uma Ukpai College of Technology in Abia State and very soon, we shall have the Uma Ukpai College of Agriculture in Abia State. We had wanted to build the Aeronautical Engineering University but we could not find enough land where we wanted to build it.

What do you wish to be remembered for later in life?

I wish to be remembered as someone who is not tribalistic. One man that loves everybody and his God. One man that cared for nothing but the work of God and the people of God. My only dream is that the people of God should remain steadfast, dedicated and committed. I want to be remembered as a man who love God and who lived a life of integrity, a life of honesty, a life of prosperity, a life of wisdom and a life of creativity and imagination. I want to be remembered as one that discovered God and lived by His standards and principles and a man that regarded everybody as his brothers and sisters irrespective of land of birth. That is how I want to be remembered.