ADEBOYE: I WAS PRAYING AGAINST INSECURITY, NOT PROTESTING AGAINST JONATHAN

The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has accused journalists of misrepresenting the date he carried a placard during a prayer walk, alleging that a report falsely linked the incident to former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

The clarification was made on Sunday during the church’s November Thanksgiving service, where the cleric recounted how the report portrayed him as a wicked man for carrying a placard allegedly against the former president, ValidViewNetwork reports.

THE CLARIFICATION

Adeboye did not deny carrying the placard. He denied the context and the timing.

“Recently, just one mischievous somebody wrote in the papers, or said somehow, ‘Pastor Adeboye is a very wicked man. After all, we know that not too long ago, he carried a placard against President Goodluck Jonathan,'” he said .

He acknowledged the act but insisted it was a religious exercise, not a political demonstration.

“True, I carried a placard. I can’t deny that. It was important. It was a prayer walk. We wanted to pray,” he said .

THE TIMELINE

The cleric stressed that the incident occurred in 2020, five years after Jonathan left office in 2015.

“But I carried the placard in 2020. Jonathan ceased to be president in 2015. I carried the placard five years in the second term of Buhari,” Adeboye said.

He explained that the exercise followed a directive for churches to organise prayer walks around their premises.

“The chairman said all churches should do a prayer walk near their churches. That’s what I did,” he said.

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According to reports from the time, the February 2, 2020, walk was organised to pray against killings and insecurity across Nigeria.

Photographs showed Adeboye carrying a placard bearing the inscription, “All Souls Are Precious to God” .

THE CRITIQUE OF JOURNALISM

Adeboye also criticised the failure of journalists to verify the facts before publishing.

“I remember in those days in the Department of Journalism, when you go there and you take a course, they talked about something called investigative journalism,” he said. “That things don’t appear as they may seem. Investigate, if you have a story, before you take it to the press”.

Addressing members of the creative industry, he expressed disappointment that the report had been accepted without proper checks.”I’m talking to those of you in the creative industry. Nobody checked,” he said .

WHY IT MATTERS

The incident is a reminder of the power of images to distort the truth.

A photograph of a pastor praying against insecurity was reframed as a protest against a former president who had been out of office for five years. The false narrative spread because no one checked the date.

Adeboye has corrected the record. But the damage to his reputation—and to the public’s understanding of the event—has already been done. ValidViewNetwork reports.