Rev Uma Ukpai, President of Uma Ukpai Evangelistic Ministries, tells ‘Nonye Ben- Nwankwo how he became a pastor and his life thereafter
How do you feel at 70?
In a way, I am grateful. I didn’t know I would live this long. I was born with nuisance value. At the age of nine, I was already an established criminal. I would go to school with a snuff box and if they were teaching a lesson I didn’t like, I would blow air into the snuff box and the air would carry the tobacco into the classroom and that would be the end of that lesson. I would sneeze with everybody and I would cough with everybody. I was very stubborn.
Didn’t your parents try to discipline you?
My father never spanked me when everybody was awake. He would flog me between 2am and 3am. The next day, I would find a good small lizard and put it inside his cup of water and cover the cup. When he opened the cup, the lizard or toad would jump out, it was my way of retaliating for flogging me.
Were you that stubborn?
I was. At the age of 10, my cousin taught me how to smoke Indian hemp. Anybody with the kind of profile I had is not expected to live long. If I hadn’t met Christ at the age of 10, I think I would have been dead by now. I am even shocked that God saved me and I am able to live up to now. I did so many unprintable things I cannot even say now because of the shame that goes with them. It never crossed my mind that I would be among those that would live up till now. It is a pleasant surprise. I am thankful and grateful to God. It makes me excited and I am fulfilled that I have lived this long.
Granted you were so stubborn when you were young but then, did you have a dream back then?
Until I met Christ, I had no dream. If I had one, it was to eat well, play hard and shock my parents and friends with my nuisance values. I took delight in surprising people. When I met Christ (my father had died and then I moved on and joined my uncle in Bori in Ogoni, Rivers State) a mad man came to our school and pursued everybody. He was a healthy looking man and he made me wonder if the life of a mad man wasn’t better than that of a normal person. He came into the school and he was stark naked. His name was Deco. As people were running away from him in school, God said to me that I could also make him run away. It was a strange voice that I heard. I commanded the mad man to roll out of the school. He fell and he rolled out of the school.
People would have been amazed?
My headmaster ran after me and asked me if I was in the cult. He asked me where I got such magical powers. I hadn’t heard of such expression and so I was shocked. I replied him it wasn’t magical. I told him I had given my life to Christ and I was told that anything I asked in the name of Jesus would be done. He was excited. He told me I would be the school’s pastor and I would be conducting the morning service from that day.
But you were young?
I was young. I asked him if he would be there and he said he would be there. That was how the journey started. When the governor of Eastern Nigeria came to our school then, three of us who were said to be the best students were brought to greet him. The first student was asked what he would want to be when he grew up. He said he was dreaming of becoming the governor’s successor. The whole school erupted with applause and with shouts of ‘Your Excellency’ renting the air. The second person said he would be the best lawyer Nigeria would ever know. It got to my turn and I told him I would be a preacher. There was silence in the whole school. At that time, there was no rich, successful pastor any of us ever knew. The pastoral college was associated with poverty.
Having become born again at a young age, you must have missed out on all those things boys usually do, especially partying and chasing women…
If I could be drinking and smoking hemp at nine years, what else would I have missed? I had a cousin who was called ‘Papadopa.’ Papadopa is a man who sells Indian hemp in the village. It was my cousin that taught me how to smoke ‘family mould.’ ‘Family mould’ is four wraps of Indian hemp smoking altogether. I had great nuisance value. I was born a criminal. There is nothing to envy in a life of an unbeliever. When Indian hemp empowers a man, the same Indian hemp would wane and leave you tired and exhausted. At the age of six, I already knew how to drink and at seven, I was already a master. I had seen what alcohol did to my uncles and relations. If you know what alcohol does to a man, you wouldn’t want to take a cup. No man takes a cup of alcohol and remains the same; you must certainly become abnormal. There was nothing I missed, I saw it all.
Did your family support your idea of becoming a pastor?
My uncle gave me the beating of my life for saying such to the governor and he drove me out of the house. I went to another uncle who said he had heard I lived in the church. He said he heard I was now a mad man roaming with the Bible and I no longer read my books. He told me he wouldn’t give me money but he would give me a job. I made up my mind to save the salary that would come with the job. I made up my mind to succeed in life. My mother was operating from a point of ignorance. She didn’t know what it meant to be a preacher. I was working in a company before I resigned to be a preacher and they were paying me well. When my mother heard I had resigned my appointment to preach, she wept. But something happened.
What happened?
We had a programme at College of Education, Uyo. As soon as I was called to preach, it threatened to rain. I asked the crowd not to carry their chairs but to remain in the place. I told them that if God had indeed called me to be a preacher, He would stop the rain and the rain stopped immediately. People were shocked. One professor beside me asked how God could answer a small boy like me. He said because God honoured me, he would also honour me. He was carrying a pouch and he gave me all the money in that pouch. The money was more than my six months’ salary where I was working. Such money was a lot of money for a young man. I went to my mother and I asked her what she would want her son to buy for her. I gave her the amount she asked for. That was when she released me to serve God.
Since you became a celebrated preacher, haven’t there been challenges?
That will come to a man that fails to obey the law of followership. Jesus said any man who wants to follow Him must deny himself first. A man who is dead doesn’t feel any pain. Such man will not feel any disappointment. Whatever happens in such a man’s life is God’s plan and it would become a makeup of the total person. I have never seen a challenge that has made me regret being a preacher. To me, I have always known that God will turn my lamentation into laughter and turn my disgrace to grace.
I read somewhere that you were kidnapped some time ago and the kidnappers asked you to drink acid; what thoughts came to your mind then? Did you feel the end had come?
I didn’t know the content in the cup, I was only asked to drink what was inside and that Jesus would appear. They had taken my car and the money I had. But I knew the Bible teaches if I would drink any deadly thing, it wouldn’t hurt me. I wasn’t afraid. I saw it as a process that would demonstrate the power of God.
Why did you tell members of your congregation that you would not give the Holy Communion unless they showed their Permanent Voter’s Card?
My job as a preacher is also to inform and educate people. I need to notch and urge them to do what would be beneficial to the nation and to them as individuals. An onlooker is powerless in the storm of life. We are praying that anyone that loves God should win the election. We are praying that those who do not love God and the church should not win. It will become possible if we are active participants and not observers. That is why I said it and I am still pushing it. I do not only say it in my church, I say it everywhere. It is a must for us. It is our civic responsibility to express our decisions with our votes.
Before now, it was believed that pastors should only advise and not get involved in partisan politics but in recent times, men of God are leaving the church and getting involved in matters concerning politics, why is that so?
There cannot be a king without a prophet. A prophet has the power to enthrone a leader. A prophet also has the power to remove a leader. It is not proper to say a man of God should not be politically involved in matters that concern a nation, it is not true. In the Bible, Samuel made Saul king. Samuel also made David king. In our present scenario, I played a part in producing the current president. A man of God is God’s agent and confidant. He is a friend of God and God can use him to express the opinion of His choice. The servant of God is indispensable in the affairs of a nation. He may not carry a membership card of any party but he must be discussing with God. There is always a man God listens to in every nation.
Recently, a sitting governor was quoted to have said the Presidency shared N6bn to members of the Christian Association of Nigeria, is it true?
A corrupt man who is a politician would always bandy lies as truth. Most of our politicians are not polished men. They can tell lies without fear of the repercussion of that lie. Why hasn’t he told us the people who collected the money, when and how they collected the money? The easiest thing under the sun is to accuse others. You don’t need anointing to accuse anybody, you only need to overfeed and you would be strong enough to accuse anybody you like. I know that blackmail is also a weapon of politics in Nigeria. We have men who said they are politicians but they are also liars. They only blackmail others in order to win the day. But remember that time will expose every man. We are anxiously waiting to hear who got the money and how it was given. If we don’t get answers to these questions, whoever brought that story must be the biggest liar that Nigeria has ever known. The governor that accused the Christian Association of Nigeria of collecting N6bn from the presidency, wasn’t he the same person that once said the broom carriers are night-soil men? Is he not the same man that is carrying broom now?
During the last election, a man of God left the pulpit to vie for political position and currently, another pastor is out to contest another political post. Is it proper for pastors to turn to politicians?
No woman can marry two husbands and be comfortable and happy. A man of God who has gone into politics is now married to two people – God and politics. The first man you referred to in the last election claimed he is a prophet. But my position is that no lawyer can be a prophet. A lawyer is trained to talk. A prophet is a man of few words and a man of prayer and fasting. You cannot be a lawyer and prophet at the same time. When somebody comes out with these two colours, you have to find out which is and which is not. But the end of that election has told the rest of the story; we don’t even need to spend time on that. I have said that time reveals every man’s true personality. You cannot pretend all the time to all the people. A day would come when your mask would fall off. I don’t know the second man who is involved in this current election, so I would not say anything about him. I am hearing about him for the first time this election period. I don’t live in Lagos, so I may not know him; those who live in Lagos would tell us more about him. But then, time would also tell us who he really is.
Going down memory lane, there was a time you made a tough decision where you had to choose to save your wife and not your kids. In your sober moments, don’t you regret such decision?
Before the accident that claimed the lives of my kids, God had told me there would be a day He would not answer my prayer. This was after a big crusade I conducted in Lagos. God said He would test me. Every man’s faith must be tested. In that discussion, I told God that he could take away everything from me but not my wife. I told Him if he would remove my wife, then the pillar that held the house would collapse. That day, by 5am, an armed robber had broken into my office and removed every equipment we owned. That same day, they removed every printing machine I had. I told my wife that might be the day God had warned me about. Before then, some people had fasted with me and we were asking God to change His mind. God said no school graduates any man without testing the man. We left Uyo with two vehicles. I was driving ahead of the second car. When my driver who was driving the second car got to a very sharp corner, he stepped on his brake suddenly and the car somersaulted and went into the river with the roof of the car. My children were in the vehicle. I dived into the river to save the children and my wife did the same. She knew she couldn’t swim even up till now. She was drowning behind me. She had been thrown up six times and it was remaining one more time. I thought if I saved my wife, my prayer would bring my children back to life. I brought out the children and I took them inside the car to pray for them. But another vehicle from the opposite direction drove into that car and smashed the chest of the engine and the bonnet and the bumper. I remembered that God had said there would be a day he wouldn’t answer my prayer. I resigned and gave up. The good news is that since that time, God has given us back all the things we lost. My wife kept giving birth each year until she got tired of having children. We have replaced our printing press. We lost three cars that day but God has replaced those cars 10 times over. God said for handling that crisis very well, he would bless me with 100 angels that would accompany me anywhere I want to go. I made a choice. I asked God to spare my wife. When a man loses his children, he can weep with his wife. But when a man loses his wife, he weeps alone. He wouldn’t even want the children to see his tears. It made sense to me then to save my wife. It still makes sense to me today even 30 years after.
How were you able to choose her as your wife since you may have had so many ladies who would have wished to get married to you?
It was just God. He showed her to me and He also showed me to her. In her book, ‘Mother, I have found a Man’, you would see the confirmation and affirmation of what I have said. When I was a young preacher, I didn’t go about looking for a wife. I just waited on God to show me the girl. I could communicate and discuss with Him. God showed me this girl and when she came and told me what God revealed to her, it tallied with what I heard God say. We have been together for 39 years and we feel we didn’t make any mistake.
I learnt there was a time you were duped of close to N4m?
No. Nobody can dupe me. The only time I was duped was in 1958. It wasn’t up to N10, 000. I moved from Ogoni to Port Harcourt. I saw a group of people who claimed they were money doublers. I brought out N3, 000 and gave them and they said I was unlucky and that I didn’t win. From that day, I discovered that you can be duped only when you are greedy. I walked away from them. It is not really possible to dupe a man who is not greedy.
Why don’t you plant churches, you only have a headquarters in Uyo?
I am not called to be a pastor but an apostolic evangelist. There are five-fold ministries in the Bible. God calls evangelists, teachers, pastors, prophets and apostles. One man can have a combination of all these levels of anointing. From the beginning, if I were a pastor, I wouldn’t have given birth to Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. PFN came into existence during the Greater Lagos for Christ crusade.
After 70, what more can you ask God for?
I think I am just about to start my ministry. I am presently building a polytechnic in my village. I built a hospital 18 years ago. I also want to build an eye hospital for them. I intend to build a college of agriculture for girls. We need to teach girls how to turn one goat to 20 goats in one year
