How Nigerian Pastors Breed Corruption in Nigeria

Nigerian-born Pastor Sunday Adelaja is the founder of Embassy of God Church, Kiev, Ukraine, the largest Pentecostal church in Europe.  In an interview He spoke on the wrong concepts that churches in Nigeria are promoting. Excerpts:

How do you mean?

For us to have a corrupt value system as a nation and then be hoping to produce godly leaders is hypocrisy of the highest order. It doesn’t just happen!


It would take a miracle to have such leaders, what would normally happen is that even when such leaders emerge they would be largely opposed.  They would be criticised because what they are doing will not make sense to most of the citizens. Most of the people on the ground profess different value systems.

The value systems the reformed leaders are bringing to our society would conflict with the ones that people are used to. The people would be condemning them. The conflict equals clashes. That means there would be controversies and disagreements.

That is what happened when we had a quite disciplined, god- fearing, pious leader in Muhammadu Buhari in the ‘80s. He was overthrown and the people rejoiced because the discipline and order he was bringing to our people was totally strange to them.

We are used to living the way we like to live. We are used to keeping our freedom, our liberty, our way of doing things. If we now have a god -fearing leader that wishes to develop the country, he would have to first alter the way we do things. Until we change, nothing changes. We didn’t want to change, so when Babangida who was more like us overthrew Buhari, we were happy.

How does the church come in then?

The truth is that our value system comes from our pulpit. Our value system comes from our religious beliefs. Our value system comes from our religious practices. Our value systems come from our educational system. In Nigeria, the authority of the religious institutions is much higher than the authority of the educational system.

So, most of our value system is influenced by faith and religion. That is why I am saying it is the faulty and corrupt messages we have introduced to our pulpits that is responsible for producing corrupt practices in our society.

Can you give examples of this?

A pastor could say that somebody would be a millionaire before the end of the year. Whereas we are in November or December and there are 500 people in that auditorium. All of them will shout amen!!! Yet Pastors don’t correct them saying that no, you would not become a millionaire before the end of the year even if you shout amen for the whole day.

The only person that would become a millionaire is the person that has worked for it. The only person that would become a millionaire is the person that has at least signed a contract. When pastors don’t clarify that, everybody begins to believe that some miracles would happen.

So when such a member goes to his office and he sees an unsigned check, for a million dollars and nobody is claiming responsibility for it, he claims it. He believes that it is God that has provided for him. That is how corruption gets from the pulpit to the society.  That particular member would claim that God has answered his Pastor’s prayer.

He would boldly come to give testimony the following Sunday while the naïve and ignorant members would shout hallelujah! Meanwhile they too are expecting similar miracles and on and on. That is how the vicious circle of corruption from the pulpit to the whole country runs.