Rev. (Prof.) Paul Emeka is the new General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God Nigeria. He emerged leader of the church through an election in November 2010 to succeed Rev. (Dr.) Charles Osueke, who has proceeded on mandatory retirement. In this interview with reporters recently, Emeka spoke on his vision for the church, the challenges and what the church in general as well as politicians should do to pull back the country from the brink of political chaos. Excerpts:
As the new General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, how will you describe the condition of the church on assumption of office?
The church was progressing well but what caused the transition was that the man I succeeded, Reverend (Dr.) Charles Osueke completed his tenure and was to go on a mandatory retirement. So, when he went on this mandatory retirement, he rounded off with the 34th General Council Meeting and an election was conducted and I happened to be the man elected to take his place. Well, I met it (the church) well. The church has been good because my predecessor tried the much he could to put the church on good footing and the church has been maintaining it till today. I have just come in to continue from where he stopped.
What would be your priorities as General Superintendent of the church?
My vision now that I have taken charge is to consolidate the spirituality of the church and also to keep on with the existing projects that my predecessor started like the Evangel University, the camp at Okpoto and some other ones. But that is not to say that we will stop at that. There are still more things to be done for the church that we need to carry on. For example, when I read what we call the Second Nike Lake Declaration, and that happened to be my vision, we mentioned the fact that the church up till this time, which we started over 70 years ago, had not really been embarking on business ventures. It has been depending solely on the tithes and offerings of the church.
And we felt that it is good for us to embark on mega church projects, which would be like ventures and investments. We are also going to embark on the evangelisation of the African countries that have not been properly evangelised. Already, we are there, but we want to expand it. That is one thing we want to do. But at the same time, I discovered that there was a time that we paid very big attention to foreign missions and we discovered that the attendance, the population of the church in the nation was dwindling. This time around, I will also let the people know, like I am letting you know, that we are going to embark on it to make sure that we properly evangelise Nigeria and increase the population of the church.
The church presently is over two million, but we want to take it to where it should be by embarking on full missions and strong evangelistic strategies. That is what we will do and we will continue with it. We will also look at the salary structure of our ministers. We intend to increase it. We also want to establish a centralised pool from where we will be paying our ministers. Foremost among this is the fact that we want to launch into satellite broadcasting of our gospel. And we are planning seriously, not just to go and patronise an existing one, but to start our own full scale and begin to broadcast. It will help us to reach out, to evangelise all Nigeria and across the country and the continent. These are some of the things we wish to do.
My vision as an individual is interwoven with the vision of the church because I stay here to serve the church. My own individual mission is to go ahead in my ministry of saving souls. But I have chosen Assemblies of God to be a channel through which I am going to express my ministry. I have set the vision and I believe that the vision will go well.
Since you assumed office, what would you say the challenges are?
The challenges I am facing is adjustment and these challenges are normal. We are coping with these challenges. The other challenge is to actually to know where we will build. For example, our big camp at Okpoto, where we use for our mega church programmes, is now being shared with the Evangel University. The structures we put up there are mainly for the camps and our programmes, especially penile that attracts about 100,000 persons. When we started talking about Evangel University, the National Universities Commission recommended that we put on ground structures and we had to convert these structures that were formally used for penile, our church programmes, to the university, which requires us to begin afresh. We are also talking about finding another land in this urban area to begin to set up another camp.
What is the state of the Evangel University project?
The NUC has come here a number of times, supervising it and they gave us specifications and we have been building to the specification they gave to us. I think right now, we seem to have completed what they recommended for us. We are waiting for them to come and I believe that they are going to come before February ends. When they come, we are expecting nothing less than total approval for us to take off.
What will you say on the recurrent religious crisis in the country, particularly in the North, and what is Christian Association of Nigeria’s position on Nigeria’s security situation?
The position of CAN is also the position of Assemblies of God. That position is that we condemn in its totality what is going on in the North. We think the government should upgrade security there. If you look at the pattern of killings there, Christians are killed. The Muslims are on the offensive. They begin it because by the injunction we are given in the Bible, we don’t cause trouble. But we know that we can defend ourselves. These Muslims will cause horrific attacks. They will come from nowhere, kill people and before the Christians will re-organise to defend themselves, the soldiers have already come and stopped them. It has continued and now we have come to believe strongly that the military are taking sides with the Muslims to keep killing Christians. So, we object to this strongly and say that something should be done.
We also feel that the Boko Haram of a thing in far away Maiduguri should also be stopped because the outside world is watching. Anybody that wants to be the president of Nigeria should take security matter seriously and give it priority so that it will not look like a country of small boys who cannot stop themselves from fighting. Our men pay lip service to security situation and they do nothing. Every day it keeps worsening. You hear bomb blast here, bomb blast there, killing and then terrorism. All of them are coming and we can’t control any one of them. So, CAN is not happy; Assemblies of GOD is not also happy with what is happening.
Has your church been affected in whatever way by the crisis?
Even if not in this one, the ones in the past, our members and churches were affected. But from the proportion, the number killed presently, will not justify singling it out and publishing it. Rather, we talk as Christians. But as for being affected, they have always been affected in many ways. Sometimes, we send relief to help all Christians and send another one to help members of Assemblies of God who are affected.
What do you think is the way out of the problem?
All Christians must know how to pray and pray strongly for that situation because we do know that the devil use territorial spirits to cause havoc in the world. That is from the point of view of spirituality. But we also feel that the government has a lot to do by meaning business and coming there. Whatever government means to do, it can achieve. If government means there will be no riot any longer there, we only need a leader that will summon enough courage with strong administrative will to arrest the situation. We only feel that government has a lot to do to go there and quell that trouble. Panels have been set up, committees have been set up to study the indigeneship and religious crises in Jos, for example. They have come out with their reports and those things should be implemented. For example, in the North over there, people kill, those that kill are arrested and you discover that many of them are foreigners, helping the Muslims. Nothing is done to them and you discover that one night, those with financial muscle will bribe their way out, open prison doors and tell us the
y have escaped. We have seen all these happen. If government is serious, we will see all these things stop.