'Our President Reminds Us Of Jesus Christ' - CAN Says

In a recent interview with Vanguard newspapers, the Christian Association of Nigeria’s Director of National Issues, Sunday Oibe, he said contrary to what people thought of the association's embattled president, Ayo Oritsejafor has never collected a dime from the presidency.

Elder Oibe told reporters that Pastor Oritsejafor has been working tirelessly for the association adopting the leadership style of Jesus Christ despite heavy criticisms thrown at him owing to the recent jet scandal.

On the kind of support CAN president gets from the association, Oibe told the paper that Oritsejafor is the most misunderstood, most troubled and the most misrepresented President of CAN.

Read excerpts from the interview:

"If people need to celebrate any man, it is this man because he has lifted the profile of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Before, people talk down on CAN, today you don’t just talk down on CAN without CAN responding. That is a very huge achievement. One of the greatest achievements that he has done which has never ever happened before in the history of CAN, there has never been any President of CAN who interfaced with all the different blocs of CAN, and there is no bloc that can say the CAN President has not come either physically to worship with them or participated in one of their projects. Do you know that some of the Christian leaders that were killed, like some pastors in Maiduguri, he gave them accommodation, gave their children scholarship.

This is a man who understands the Jesus’ style of leadership; Jesus was not there for the big men alone, He was there for the down trodden. Pastor Ayo builds. Every bloc will tell you that we’ve never had a CAN President who was able to reach other denominations outside his own. We have never had a CAN President who when the churches in the North are being burnt, Christians are being killed, who took personal pain to identify with these people, this he has done at a personal risk.

Another remarkable thing that this man has done which people don’t know, he believes that he doesn’t know it all; it’s only a fool who claims to know it all. He believes that every material has been deposited in the Church by God, so he decided to tap into the professionals, journalists, lawyers, engineers, doctors, all kinds of people who are within the Church, who are ready to put their talents at the disposal of Jesus Christ to use. What he doesn’t know, he asks them. Even retired generals, he relates with them."

He still has about two years to go. Is he getting the kind of support he’s supposed to get from the Christian body in Nigeria?

"Well, this is the most misunderstood President of CAN, the most troubled President of CAN, the most misrepresented President of CAN; but because he’s a human being, sometimes they find it difficult to understand his good intentions and what he is doing for the good of everybody and people call him all manner of names. But he resolved from day one that he’s going to remain focused since he accepted those responsibilities and he remains focused undoubtedly, and gradually people are begin to understand him.

Let me give you one example. There was one Christian organisation, they invited him and they never knew he was going to come. He went and, by the time they listened to him and saw the kind of things he does, somebody said, ‘ we are misrepresenting you, we didn’t know you were this lovely, God fearing, simple, easy going’.Even when we met with Muslim professionals and clerics, one of the Muslims said they saw him as a person who hated Islam. People for their selfish and evil intentions say all kinds of evil things against this man. When they decided to present us with the gift of the aircraft, it became news and some of your colleagues said rubbish things about him and they were asking whether Jonathan bought the plane for him."

Jonathan did not buy the plane?

"I was there, it was like a surprise gift because he had an experience when he went to Malaysia, he had difficulties connecting flight to come for a program that started in his church and it was like a setback.

Pastor Ayo is misrepresented intentionally because Nigerians believe in fortune, so the aim is to run him down, particularly because of the way he emerged as the President of CAN, nobody gave him an opportunity. A man who just came into CAN not quite long and now for him to take a shot at the presidency of CAN and he got it whereas nobody gave the Pentecostal the opportunity. You know what that means. I don’t want to call it envy. I call it human bitterness.

But, again, he refused to allow that one to dissuade him, he remains focused on what he believes and he’s pursuing because he said he came in because of the suffering Church and he will speak for her at the risk of his life and that he is doing perfectly without looking left or right. This will not be a good word to use, but do you know the man has abandoned his family, abandoned his ministry for the sake of the larger Church in Nigeria? Some of the big churches that have money and whatever, are they coming to give him support?

They are not doing it, and nobody is talking about that; but these same people run to him when there’s a problem. The media, I’m not trying to accuse you people, but you have not been very professional because there is an orchestrated plan somewhere that anything that has to do with this man, they kill it, they don’t put it for people to know; but anything that is negative, that’s what will fly. The empowerment program that he does every year, nobody reports it, nobody talks about it. What he’s doing for widows and the persecuted churches in the North, I know of communities that he gives what is called revolving loan. And there are wealthy pastors in this country who are not doing anything about that.

Do you know that Pastor Ayo’s yearly empowerment program, even Muslims benefit from it. One thing that stands him out is that he’s not ready to compromise or sacrifice truth on the altar of dialogue, on the altar of trying to be a nice Nigerian, on the altar of trying to be politically correct.. We need to celebrate people like that."