By WALE LAWAL
I have come across, several times, many individuals and online arm chair critics, passing comments about Primate Elijah Ayodele, portraying him as a man of God whose prophecies are untrue. Some have argued that the fact that his prophecies often spread across a broad spectrum of subjects as politics, business, sports, the economy and society at large, suggests that he may be a fake man of God. According to them, ‘how can one man be seeing all these things?’ And consistently too, if I may add. So, their conclusion is, he cannot be a true man of God, that there’s no way an ordinary man of God could actually be making the sort of ground breaking prophecies he was making on a consistent basis. But the truth, if it must be told, is that Primate Ayodele is no ordinary man of God.
Each time I come across comments like the above, I often always wish the public knew a lot more about the Primate Ayodele they talk about so disparaginly. But I understand their sentiments very clearly. I used to share same sentiments several years ago before I got quite close to this enigmatic and phenomenal prophet of God. I was quite skeptical about his many revelations and prophecies. I had my doubts about the genuineness of some of his proclamations. And even after I got the opportunity to interview him on countless occasions, I still was unsure about some of his prophecies, largely because of the audacity with which he drops his prophecies and on a consistent basis too. But I soon came to the very shocking realisation that all of his prophecies were coming to pass one by one.
There were some of his prophecies that I didn’t think would come to pass and they did. And personally, I didn’t like the fact that some of them came to fulfilment. For instance, almost eight years ago before Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu emerged governor of Lagos state, Primate had warned the then governor Akinwunmi Ambode to brace up for the biggest political battle of his life. He warned Ambode that he needed to seek the face of God seriously because he would be embroiled in a fierce battle with the leadership of the APC which could cost him his office. This was long before it became public that he had problems with powerful people in the party. I didn’t like this prophecy and I believed it would never happen because I thought the party and Lagosians were impressed with the performance of Ambode and wouldn’t want him kicked out of office. But in the end, it didn’t matter what I thought, Primate Ayodele’s prophecy came to pass.
His prophecy before the 2023 presidential election is also one of his prophecies that I hoped would not come to pass. Before the election, Primate had warned that Nigerians must not vote for Tinubu. He said if we did, Nigerians would experience a situation he famously described as ‘worse, worster, worstest!’ He said if we thought things were bad during Buhari’s time, we would not be able to describe what will befall us if we vote for Tinubu. He said Nigerians will see paper on the ground and jump at it thinking it was money. I personally dismissed this prophecy as utterly impossible. I believed Tinubu had the experience and capability to turn the economy around in a way that, despite the effects of the subsidy, things would never be as bad as Primate had described. But again, his prophecy was dead accurate, things have really gotten terribly bad.
There are several of such prophecies from Primate that I disliked but yet came to pass. And this often left me wondering, how does this man get the spiritual power to make the kind of prophecies that he makes? How can a man be gifted with the power to consistently make huge prophecies with massive impact on the nation and gets it so accurately all the time? These questions had been on my mind and I finally got the answer a few years back. I have shared this story before but recent happenings within the social media with many expressing doubts about the accuracy and genuineness of Primate Ayodele’s prophecies prompted a recall of this incident.
I needed to have a little interview session with the extremely busy Primate. He was not responding to messages and wasn’t picking his calls but I kept trying relentlessly to reach him. I was seeking to get his perception and prophecies regarding some of the horrendous incidents taking place in the country. But the man of God had sent words across to me to meet up with him on the prayer mountain where he had been in isolation for about two weeks. It was a strange response. I had never met with Primate outside of the confines of his church. And from my interaction with one of his aides, the said prayer mountain was located somewhere on the outskirts of Lagos. It was going to be quite a journey. But I remained undaunted. The necessary arrangement was made. I was to meet up with one of Primate’s aides, Dare, who would be waiting for me inside the church premises, and with a vehicle and driver ready, we would take off together.
On the day of the meeting, I was up early. Thankfully, traffic was light and in a less than two hours, I was already at Primate’s church in Oke-Afa, Ejigbo. Dare, the driver and the vehicle were all waiting. We took off and embarked on a journey that was to last well over five hours. At some point, I was beginning to wonder if we would ever get there before dark and if there would be time for me to return home same day as I didn’t plan to stay till next day. But the driver, an elderly and extremely skilled man, told me to be patient, assuring me we would soon reach our destination. And indeed, we finally did. The location was somewhere inside Badagry town. But there was still one small problem. We would have to walk a small distance because the road leading up to the prayer mountain was quite impassable for vehicles. I hadn’t eaten all day so I stopped to take light snacks and a bottle of drink before we proceeded. I couldn’t risk undertaking such arduous task on empty tank. We parked the vehicle at a safe spot and began the final phase of our trip.
The road leading to the mountain itself was deplorable. It had been ravaged by erosion. There were huge and small stones wrapped in sand everywhere, you had to be careful because a slip could earn you a broken arm or twisted ankle. Up on the prayer mountain was another scenario entirely. There were small bushes, swamps and several cleared spaces where prayer meetings had obviously taken place. There were all kinds of rodents and reptiles crawling out from everywhere you turned to. Tiny cats and rabbits were not scarce occupants either. Eventually, we climbed up to a spot where we saw people in different groups praying vigorously as though the world was coming to an end. There were also several wooden sheds built to house some of the pastors and prayer warriors whom I was told practically lived there on the mountains. It was inside one of these sheds that Primate was staying in. I almost couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Primate Ayodele Elijah, a man who could afford to lodge in any 7star hotel of his choice in the country, no matter how expensive it is, was actually staying inside one of these ‘shanties’!
We met a young man sitting outside the door. He and Dare exchanged greetings and he ushered us inside. The room was darkly lit. Dare opened the only window in the room for better illumination. There was nothing in the room except a bench, a flask and some bibles stacked in a corner of the room. Then, I saw a man lying on a mat on the bare floor at the far end of the room. I took one quick look at the figure dressed in white Jalamia, the face didn’t look familiar so I diverted my attention back to Dare.
“So, where is Primate, is he part of the group praying outside?” I asked him, expecting him to nod in the affirmative. But instead, he smiled and said to me, “But that’s Primate staring at you on the floor!”
I turned back to the gaunt looking figure on the mat that I’d dismissed moments ago. The man staring tiredly at me barely had any semblance to Primate. It was until the man extended his hand for a handshake and said, “Baba!” that was when I confirmed it was truly Primate. He was now sitting up on the floor. The voice was unmistakable. And Primate Ayodele is the only elderly person that calls me ‘baba’. But the man had lost a whole lot of weight. His usually smooth and glowing face had grown pale and his eyes had sunk deep into their sockets. He was unshaven. His beards had overgrown and he was looking so unkempt. Even his voice was barely audible. It was weak and it quivered when he talked.
“You couldn’t recognize me?” he asked. I promptly rose up from the bench where I sat and greeted him properly with a slight bow. I was staring at him in utter disbelief. He had emaciated greatly, almost beyond recognition. His good looks had totally disappeared. The intense fasting and prayers he had gone to do on the mountain had taken its toll on him.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I said to him as I took his hand in mine.
“Sit down, please,” he returned as he adjusted himself properly on the mat where he sat.
“Sir, you’re looking so different, I almost couldn’t recognize you,” I tried to explain why I couldn’t immediately tell he was the one lying on the floor when I first came him.
The enigmatic man of God smiled. Then, he said, “When you’re
on the mountain, without food, no light, no comfort, a lot will definitely
change about you. Let us get down to business.”
That’s Primate Ayodele for you. A man of few words. Always focused. Has little
or no time for frivolities. For him, he detests wasting of valuable time, it’s
always straight to business.
“You said you want me to look at some of the things happening right now and some of our prophecies that have come to pass, ‘the weak but not tired’ Primate began. “A lot of our prophecies are already coming to pass. Bad governance, increase in price of fuel, we said it all. We said there will be massive drop in electricity supply in the country, has that not been happening already? Has the situation in the country not gotten worse now? We have also been talking since last year about the kind of hardship Nigerians will face, is that not happening too? In fact, I do not want to scare anybody, but the truth is that, we have not even seen hardship yet with this government. There are already little protests coming up against the government because of this hardship people are facing, but the big protests will soon come again. By the time price of food commodities and cost of living continues to shoot through the roof, the economy will be shut down completely. Truth is that we have not seen anything yet. We need prayers in this country. Muslims and Christians need to come together and pray for Nigeria..,……”
We spoke for well over an hour. The man of God, despite his tired state, kept on releasing one prophecy after another and revealed what the Lord said about most of the happenings in the country. At the end of my brief chat with the Primate, he got up and stepped outside the shed with me. And then, out there in the open, I got a clearer look at him. It was scary to see how much the two weeks of going without food and living in that kind of condition had ravaged him so terribly. This explains why sometimes, you see the Primate looking very lean, dark and weak. This often happens after he's been away from the church for a week or two. I wanted to take pictures of the surroundings, but the man outside the door insisted no cameras were allowed on the mountain. It’s some sort of standard rule on all prayer mountains. I was not even allowed to take Primate’s picture as well.
I gave up but was consoled by the fact that I had seen things myself. Now, I could see that it is no child’s play, churning out accurate prophecies the way Primate does. Now, I had seen the hidden secrets behind his prophetic powers. I had seen how he is able to come out consistently with staggering prophecies that have confounded many, including the high and mighty, every day. One has to regularly go through rigorous spiritual rebirth to be able to stand tall and make such prophetic declarations and prophecies that Primate has been making with such astonishing consistency for several decades running. This is why his prophecies rarely fail. This is why he has been able to release prophecies that have sent shock waves through out the African continent and beyond, warning many African leaders of unseen dangers ahead of them and helping those who heed his warnings retain their seats of power and govern their people with relative ease and calm.
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