Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, has challenged journalists to verify information before publication, accusing a reporter of wrongly linking his 2020 prayer walk to former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
Adeboye said the incident took place five years after Jonathan left office in May 2015, during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
The cleric spoke on Sunday at the church’s November Thanksgiving service, where he recalled how a report portrayed him as having carried a placard in protest against Jonathan.
He admitted carrying the placard but insisted that the exercise was a prayer walk organised to seek divine intervention over insecurity and killings in the country.
“True, I carried a placard. I can’t deny that. It was important. It was a prayer walk. We wanted to pray,” he said.
Adeboye explained that the exercise followed a directive asking churches to organise prayer walks around their premises.
He said, “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.”
The cleric accused the journalist of distorting the circumstances surrounding the event and criticised the failure to investigate the matter before publishing the report.
He also urged media practitioners to uphold the principles of investigative journalism, recalling lessons from his exposure to journalism studies in the 1960s.
“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.
He added, “Investigate, if you have a story, before you take it to the press.”
On February 2, 2020, Adeboye led RCCG members on a prayer walk in Lagos over insecurity and killings across the country.
The procession began at the church’s national headquarters in Ebute Meta, proceeded towards Atan Cemetery in Yaba and returned to the church.
Photographs from the exercise showed the cleric carrying a placard with the inscription, “All Souls Are Precious to God”.
The prayer walk followed a three-day fasting and prayer programme declared by the Christian Association of Nigeria to seek divine intervention against terrorism and other security challenges.
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