Security and Task Force team at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, MFM, headquarters, harassed and detained a renowned citizen journalist who attempted to report a New Year’s Eve crossover night service at the church headquarters along the Lagos-Ibadan express road.
Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Saharareporters, accompanied by Lagos-based citizen journalist, Segun O’Law, who reports for the site from Lagos, stopped in for the church’s crossover night service, but were molested and detained illegally for four hours by a joint task force of church security, armed police and the State Security Service.
Mr. Sowore arrived the church bearing a 5D Canon Camera, with a frame holder on his shoulder, while Mr. O’Law held a dual purpose shots and video-taping mini Panasonic Camera.
Upon entering the main gate, which outlooks the busy Lagos end of the expressway, the crew moved into the auditorium and identified themselves to the security officers and ushers they encountered every inch of their way.
The crew’s mission, Mr. Sowore said, was to take photos and cover the service; and having made that clear to the officials, they were allowed in and motioned towards the altar after their identity cards were scrutinized.
But as Mr. Sowore approached the front where the church’s General Overseer, Pastor Daniel Olukoya, was delivering a sermon, he was mobbed by several church Task Force officers guarding the altar, some wearing aprons with inscription ‘Prayer City Army’.
“We were dragged to the back of the altar by a mob that threatened at first to smash our camera,” Mr. Sowore said in interview days after the attack. “The mob later handed us over to the police and the SSS operatives attached to the church.”
Accompanying journalist, Mr. O’Law, who at this time was attempting to establish a separate location for his reporting, rushed to the scene to identify Mr. Sowore and reaffirm the team’s mission. The security team would have none of that, the journalists said.
The authorities of the church would not comment for this story when contacted for details of the events.
A man who answered our reporter’s call declined comments, saying we should come physically to the church’s headquarters in Lagos for any enquiries. He insisted that the telephone number listed on the church’s website was meant for those interested in prayer consultation. He would not also give his name.
“I can’t make any comment,” the official said. “Just come to our office and that is the only way we can respond to your enquiries.”
But Mr. Sowore’s narrative, depicted how a reportorial adventure that was meant to highlight how some of Nigeria’s most populous and affluent church congregations pray their ways into a new year, turned almost violent right within the church premises.
At the MFM, as at several other churches, worshippers are known to view the final nights of outgoing years as key to shaping the new years.
Amid thunderous singing and praying, hundreds of thousands of congregants at the church’s sprawling camp ground waited ecstatically for the earliest seconds of 2013 to herald expected miracles and new blessings.
While Mr. Sowore and his colleague were dragged to the church’s rear entrance, a large crowd gathered, he recalled.
Mr. Sowore’s argument that he was only doing his job merely infuriated the crowd. One member fumed about wearing down the Jesus in him and transforming into Satan to kill the journalist.
For wearing neck beads designed of cowry shells (which he says are meant to showcase his ‘Africanness’), some of the church security operatives described Mr. Sowore as a ‘sinner’, ‘satan incarnate’, among other vilifying christening.
Moments later, the crew were pushed into a security van and whisked to a detention post within the church’s expansive premises. The Task Force, who had demanded Mr. Sowore’s identity card had also seized it, forcefully detained the crew and invited the Division Police Officer of Ibafo Police station, which oversees security in the area.
Upon arrival, the DPO inspected Mr. Sowore’s local identity card, which he uses as a special correspondent for one of the numerous Nigerian media he collaborates with.
The local police chief confirmed the card was genuine after making some calls through to the media office. He however disappeared after confirming who Mr. Sowore was, and declared he would rather not get involved and advised the church officials to allow for amicable settlement to avoid blowing up the matter.
The church task force however refused, Mr. Sowore said. Instead, they repeatedly requested to delete the photos and video recordings in the cameras before releasing the devices and the journalists. The crew remained in the church detention for four hours.
Within the period of the journalists’ illegal detention, one of the MFM pastors in the task force emerged with a cane and attempted to flog Mr. Sowore, but was cautioned.
The pastor and his task force team members had to the sight of the two journalists, flogged, slapped and humiliated some teenage boys and girls who were arrested within the church premises for selling bible literatures, prayer books, printed praises and worship songs and sachet water.
“What shocked me most was to discover that MFM maintains an illegal detention security post,” the publisher of the online advocacy and whistle-blowing website said.
Mr. Sowore said he hoped to maintain a low profile all through, to experience what journalists face with authoritarian attitude of established local African institutions towards reporters.
That ploy soon failed when one of the senior ministers in the church, who had spotted Mr. Sowore among the crowd behind the altar before they were whisked away to the detention post, waded in and enlightened the task force that Mr. Sowore was the publisher of the popular site Saharareporters.com.
The mobs, security and task force men quickly opened the website and googled Mr. Sowore’s name. They suddenly backtracked, and pleaded that all footages taken in the church be deleted, a request Mr. Sowore turned down.
Two days after the incident, the crew stopped by at a festival of Masquerades while travelling through Ondo State to cover a traditional African masquerade dance in Erekiti.
This time also, Mr. Sowore and his crew introduced themselves and presented same identity cards they showed the church security.
In a marked difference with what obtained at the church, the crew narrated, the masquerades welcomed and warmed up to them.
The MFM sits on massive hectares of land along the popular Lagos-Ibadan expressway. The church also runs a private university called Mountain Top at the same location.
Alongside the MFM, other super-populous churches, the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Living Faith Church, also known as Winners’ Chapel, with millions of worshippers, also operate expensive private universities.
While Redeem owns the Redeemers’ University for Nations, RUN, Winners’ Chapel runs Covenant University, CU.
The schools are amongst Nigeria’s most expensive with fees in several hundreds of thousands of naira, a fact that have put the churches up for intense criticisms.
Many church members have complained of not being able to enroll their wards in the schools they helped build with their tithes and offerings.
Premium Times.
The original story as presented by Sahara Reporters
A trip by a Saharareporters/SaharaTV crew in Lagos aimed at covering the “cross over” night of one of Nigeria’s mega churches on New Year’s eve ended in molestation, threats, arrest and detention by the church. The SaharaReporters’ media crew drove into the church premises of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles ministry (MFM) on the Lagos Ibadan expressway in response to news that its cross over night event was the biggest in the Lagos area.
The crew was led by Saharareporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, who was traveling underground in Nigeria as part of a series of reports for the renowned website. Upon reaching the church’s massive auditorium Mr. Sowore was ushered into the church service by church ushers situated at a small entrance, he bore a canon 5D camera mounted on his shoulder with proper photo and video recording gadgets. The period of the SaharaReporters crew arrival coincided with the sermon of the General Overseer, Dr. Daniel K Olukoya, however, the large church auditorium with several huge TV broadcast screens meant that the crew had to seek direction to the podium. As a result, twice during the sojourn, the crew tendered their local credentials to the church ushers and security to gain access near the pastor’s podium.
At no time during the visit did any member of the church security team ask members of the team for “accreditation” or press passes to cover the event. Shortly after arriving near the podium, however, Mr. Sowore was accosted by a church security official who demanded to see his identity card. Promptly given one, the official nervously began scrutinizing the card while Mr. Sowore and the crew continued filming Dr. Olukoya’s sermon, which was on the subject of fear. Within seconds of the first encounter, a mob made up of security officials descended on Mr. Sowore and a second member of the crew, demanding that they cease any form of filming in the church auditorium. Attempts by the crew to explain that they were granted access to the auditorium following presentation of their press credentials were met with a ferocious and more aggressive pack of church thugs who attempted to break the crew’s camera. The argument escalated within the purview of the pastor, who continued his preaching. But it became intense, the church security growing nastier and more physical, pushing and shoving Mr. Sowore and another crew member to the back of the church altar. In an effort to avoid disruption of the service, the chaotic scene was pushed to the back of the church where the SaharaReporters crew was confronted by an army of security personnel comprising the State Security Service (SSS), mobile policemen carrying AK 47 guns, barrel-chested private security officials of the church, as well as the church production crew and a photographer who were taking photos of SR reporters.
There, in the dark, several security agents continued the pushing and shoving, issuing more threats, including a death threat. A guy identified as the “CSO” forcefully dispossessed the crew of its cameras and gadgets and threw them in a Hilux van, while church technical crew secretly searched for any memory cards as the mob gathered around threatening to maim and kill.Mr. Sowore argued against the aggression, wondering why a church service being streamed live was a subject of such secrecy and acrimony. He asked what the church was hiding and what the difference was between the Jesus police and the Devil’s army, and in response to an individual church member’s threat to physically assault him to death, Mr. Sowore asked, “What’s the big deal didn’t they kill Jesus, wasn’t it the church that killed Jesus Christ”.
As the mob got more charged and dangerous, one of the SSS men tried to calm the mob asking that the crew be taken into police custody. As the team made to drive off, it came under further allegations of “insubordination” from the church technical staff who had unsuccessfully failed to remove memory cards from the reporters’ equipment, not knowing they had already removed them and taken them out of the church premises. At that point, members of the SaharaReporters team had also begun secretly filming the encounter on their cellphones. In frustration, the leader of the church interrogation team accused Mr. Sowore of being sponsored by the devil because of the cowry shells he wears around his neck. A more serious allegation was soon to follow as they claimed that the team was sent by Boko Haram, the violent Nigerian Islamic sect that has been bombing churches in Northern Nigeria, to bomb their church. By that time, the team was surrounded by over 40 church people, police and thugs, who threatened them with death if they did not produce the memory cards.
The SaharaReporters team stood its ground, vehemently daring them to do their worst. As things got extremely heated a senior leader of the Mountain of Fire Church, who said he knew Mr. Sowore from his University of Lagos days waded in and asked that the mob step back. He cautioned that the incident could be detrimental for the church, disclosing to them that Mr. Sowore was the founder of SaharaReporters.com. In view of the fact that Mr. Sowore was traveling discreetly in Nigeria, that revelation didn’t go well with the crew but that intervention forced the church CSO to drive the crew to the church security post and detention center. There the crew was handed over to the officer in charge with the stern instruction that they be treated as criminals engaging in trespass and criminal espionage.The elderly security man promptly invited the Divisional Police Officer of the Nigerian police station at Ibafo in Ogun state who came and took their identity cards. He made a phone call to the local media affiliate and confirmed that we were legitimate.
The DPO himself then curiously fled the scene afterwards, leaving the SaharaReporters team to face further abuse and harsh interrogation from the three church staff members that had accompanied them to the detention center.
One of them, the editor of MFM News, along with a female production crew member of the church, verbally abused the reporters throughout the encounter.
The technical production chief of the Mountain of Fire Church also physically assaulted Mr. Sowore as he tried to retrieve another memory card that was unrelated to the coverage. The production crew later left, while a new set of younger church security task force hounded the detainees for hours. The reporters were kept in the dingy security post without any formal charges. The SR crew later decided on another round of protests when they found out that none of the people keeping them detained were officially affiliated with the police. In essence, they were being detained by the church, a non-state actor, in Nigeria. As the crew approached the counter to retrieve its cameras and leaven the account of the latest information, the younger task force members blocked the SR crew and some of them brought out a whip and sticks to attack the SR crew, they were cautioned not to try it.
Soon, two minsters arrived to plead with us to delete our footage claiming to have confirmed that they had shown saharareporters website to several top pastors at the GO’s office and that they actually patronize SaharaReporters on a daily basis. It is noteworthy that the second member of the new group was the former UNILAG student activist who had cautioned against any form of maltreatment during the molestation session at the back of the church when the crew was first arrested. After a meeting with the leader of the security post they released our cameras.
The CSO also arrived at the scene, where he apologized to the crew and offered to return Mr. Sowore’s cellphone. When the SR crew left the Mountain of Fire Church premises, it was about 3:00 AM. The crew had spent the New Year’s first hours in the detention of the church; one of our camera’s flashes had been damaged and Mr. Sowore’s glasses were missing. Of no less importance, at the detention center we saw the abuse of common Nigerians by Mountain of Fire Church security officials. Leaflet sellers as well as water and roadside hawkers are being routinely beaten and abused. One person was actually chained to a door and repeatedly beaten and abused. His offence: he was said to have been selling “illegal stuff”” on church premises.