By Yinka Giwa
The Founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide, Bishop David Oyedepo, has broken ranks with the more conciliatory position earlier taken by the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, delivering a blistering condemnation of the Federal Government’s handling of Nigeria’s worsening insecurity and declaring that divine judgement was about to overtake those behind the nation’s bloodshed.
Speaking during a service at Faith Tabernacle, Canaanland, Ota, on Sunday, the fiery cleric lamented the continued killings across the country and accused both the perpetrators and their sponsors of inviting God’s wrath upon themselves.
Without mentioning President Bola Tinubu by name, Oyedepo questioned what he described as the government’s apparent silence in the face of daily massacres, insisting that Nigerians could no longer remain indifferent while innocent citizens were being slaughtered.
“You can’t slaughter members of my family and expect me to pray for you,” the bishop declared to loud applause from the congregation.
“I pray against you, against your household and against your generation in the name of Jesus.”
In one of his strongest public interventions on the nation’s security crisis in recent years, Oyedepo pronounced curses on those he alleged were financing criminal violence across Nigeria.
“Every sponsor of killers in Nigeria, you come under a curse today. Everyone trading with the lives of men in the name of ransom, the curse of the Lord hits you today.”
The respected Pentecostal leader suggested that the identities of those sponsoring violent groups were widely known, declaring that only those unwilling to face reality could claim ignorance.
“Everybody knows that these wicked people are being sponsored. Anyone who doesn’t know that has a problem,” he said.
Turning his attention to the government, Oyedepo expressed disbelief that authorities appeared unable, or unwilling, to halt the killings.
“You mean they are killing people every day and the government is pretending that they don’t know what to do?” he asked.
The bishop said he had deliberately restrained himself from speaking publicly for a long time but believed the moment had come for divine intervention.
“I’ve kept quiet, but when you see God keep quiet at wickedness, it is because the bubble is about to burst.”
Drawing from Scripture, he declared that God’s apparent silence should never be mistaken for indifference.
“For a long time I have held my peace, God said. But now I will rise like a wounded lion and will devour at once.”
Repeating what became the central refrain of his sermon, Oyedepo declared several times that “the bubble will burst.”
“As the Lord lives, whose I am, this bubble will burst.”
The bishop also criticised what he described as the government’s failure to publicly demonstrate sufficient outrage over the relentless killings, saying he had yet to hear a forceful official condemnation commensurate with the scale of the bloodshed.
“I have not heard any statement from government quarters against the killings. I’m yet to hear one, sir.”
Lamenting what he described as the declining value placed on human life, Oyedepo questioned official priorities, apparently referring to recent controversies over restrictions on public preaching.
“Our human life is not a value anymore… And now you mustn’t preach in the bus. Is that the issue we are facing now? My God. You think we are dummies? No, sir.”
The remarks represent a markedly tougher tone than that adopted in June by Pastor Enoch Adeboye, whose comments were widely interpreted as offering support for President Tinubu’s handling of insecurity.
Adeboye had argued that the Commander-in-Chief could not personally fight terrorists once he had issued operational directives to the military and security agencies, comparing Tinubu’s role to that of world leaders who formulate policy while leaving execution to security professionals.
“When the commander-in-chief has given instructions to his subordinates, he has done his bit. You don’t expect him to go and put on khaki and fight,” Adeboye had said.
The RCCG leader, however, acknowledged that insecurity had worsened and spread beyond the North into parts of southern Nigeria. He also criticised some presidential aides for presenting an overly optimistic picture of the security situation and urged the administration to issue security chiefs a 90-day ultimatum to decisively tackle terrorism while pursuing those financing violent groups.
Oyedepo’s latest intervention, however, appeared to go much further, shifting attention from operational failures to what he portrayed as official silence in the face of escalating bloodshed and warning that divine judgement was imminent.
His remarks add another influential clerical voice to the growing national conversation on insecurity, coming on the heels of the Nigerian Catholic Bishops Conference’s censure of the Tinubu administration over insecurity, the economy and the state of the nation in general.
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