Living beyond age 13 remains a miracle for me —Pastor Okoh

Pastor Anthoni Okoh is the founder of Sovereign Word Church, with headquarters in Lagos. The cleric, who turns 50 today, tells KEHINDE OYETIMI of his struggles, challenges and triumphs through the years.

 

What would you refer to as the major points of your years as a child?

Pastor Okoh: My growing up was very challenging, in the sense that, as a son of a police officer, we were always moving from one place to another; we were always forced to begin again. My father was always transferred from one police formation to another, from one police barracks to another. Within the first few years, this was so. But at a point, my father had to retire because of the constant relocations. And then, God had helped my parents, they had built a house in Benin before my father retired.

 

What constituted the temperament of your parents?

Pastor Okoh: My mum was very strict; she was not very friendly. My father’s social life was quite extreme because he drank a lot. He was always outside the home. He did not really have a personal experience with his children. We were seven as children. One of us passed on three years ago.

 

You had a life-changing crisis when you were a teenager. What really happened?

Pastor Okoh: When I was 13 years old, I think I was in Class Three, during one of our outdoor games in school, I noticed some difficulty in walking. I noticed I was having unusual amount of saliva in my mouth. I felt feverish. It didn’t climax into anything at the moment but it just lingered. I equally noticed that I had blood in my saliva. It got to a point when I had difficulty in walking. I was feeling tremendous pain in my hip. There was a day I felt so strongly that something bad was going to happen as I walked to school. Every step I took was quite painful at my hip joint. It was strange. I felt that it could be my last day in school for a long time. In school that day, I could not go out for break; I didn’t enjoy moving around. It was a major discomfort. I think that day was a Friday. The pain lingered. In those days, people were not really medically informed. When there were health issues, they would just get a nurse down the street. They started injecting me. I got out from one treatment to the other. But I got worse. The problem lingered into weeks. The situation became difficult. My mum noticed that I couldn’t move without being aided. I became bedridden. I had tremendous difficulty in sitting and I was always sweating in the night. It just worsened. After a few weeks, my mum just called a friend.

 

Where was your father through all these?

Pastor Okoh: My father was an indifferent person. He really never connected with us. I should not lie that I had a wonderful father. I remember while preaching in a church in California. I never knew that someone who grew up with me and knew me very well from Nigeria was in attendance. She was already married and fully settled there. She kept laughing at the stories I told while preaching. After the service, she walked into the pastor’s office to greet me in my native name. Then it dawned on me that this person knew me from the beginning. Thank God I didn’t tell lies while preaching or else I would have made a mockery of myself. She said that one of the things that attracted her to the meeting was because she saw my name on the flyer and she knew I was the one. So, my father was never there.

My mum had a friend, Madam Clara Okotie-Eboh. She was the chief medical director of General Hospital, Benin. This was about 1982. She was the daughter of a former finance minister. She is very old now. She was a classmate with my mum. While my mother was a teacher, Madam Clara took to the medical profession. After my mum took me to her, Madam Clara called some orthopedic doctors to examine me. When they came, they asked me to go for an X-ray. One of the doctors was stirring his cup of coffee. When he saw that the cartilage in my hip joint had been eaten off, he screamed. The cup of coffee fell from his hand. He was shocked. He told my mum that she should have brought me earlier. He said they would not know how to go about my situation.

I was admitted and was given so many injections. Within the first one month, I took more than 90 injections, not mentioning the ones I was administered orally. That is why I am celebrating my 50th birthday. Six months after I was in the hospital, I was using crutches. There was really not much change, perhaps the sweating stopped but the pain never went away. My feet were put on traction. They were suspended. I didn’t really improve. Eventually, I was discharged, not because I had improved but because they felt that keeping me in the hospital was a waste of time. Out of frustration, the doctors let me go. They were three Indian doctors who tried treating me. I went back home. Like every good mother, my mum stood by me. My mother thereafter contacted another doctor who was consulting for UBTH. He had a private clinic in Benin. He started treating me.

During that period, my immediate elder sister was in her final year in the secondary school. She was in Idia College. She was the president of the Christian Union. She told me about the crusade that was organised by the late Archbishop Benson Idahosa, and he was bringing in Robert Schambach, from America to preach. They invited all campuses, fellowships, churches. It was a big crusade. One Dr Boyo was the president of the Christian Union at the University of Benin. He encouraged my sister to bring me for the crusade. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome was called Bro Chris then. He was the president of the Christian Union in Edo College. He, my sister and Dr Boyo were witnesses to this crusade. They drove me in a car to the crusade. I sat at the back of the car. The crusade was held at an open field. I sat there and observed.

After preaching, Schambach prayed for the sick. A popular deaf mute at New Benin got healed and the whole place went up in serious joy and shouting. He then said he was going to pray a mass prayer for people to be healed. Dr Boyo aided my coming out of the car. They were sympathetic to my plight. Dr Boyo, Pastor

and my sister laid their hands on me at the crusade while prayers were being offered. They encouraged me to drop my crutches. I took my first few steps; my feet were wobbly. I was shaking. The strange thing was that I was pain-free. It was strange. The feet were weak. The natural cause of the weight of the body coming on the feet had to take its toll. That was the genesis of my recovery. Idahosa and Schambach are in heaven today. They were not aware of what happened to me. It was a big crusade. The supernatural was that the cartilage was restored.

When I got home, my sister and I could not tell my parents what had happened to me because they were strict Catholics. We were supposed to be on our way to see the doctor when my sister and I decided to stop over at the crusade. The following day, my mother went to school to teach. It was not possible for me to just go to my mum and tell her I was healed and therefore would not need the crutches anymore. She had spent so much on me. I slept well after the crusade. I had a dream where I saw some people in white clothes carrying out a surgery on me. They looked foreign and strange, but they didn’t talk. After a while, they told me to go that there was nothing wrong with me anymore. I woke up in the morning feeling very relieved. I went about the house unaided. My mum saw me and she was shocked. She went to work. Each day, I took a walk around the house. But for over six months while the crisis lasted, I had not moved around. But on this day, I was very curious. I took my father’s old bicycle by the wall. I wanted to get in touch with my friends. I rode the bicycle down to the street and visited one of my friends who was also just recuperating and so didn’t go to school. We played table tennis. It had rained so the weather was deceptive. I didn’t know that it was already late. My mother had returned from work and so the entire house was worried. It was when my friend’s father returned from work that it dawned on me that it was late. When I got home, my mother was glad. But she started accepting the fact that something wonderful had happened to me.

We visited the doctor who had been treating me since I was discharged from the hospital. There, I told him I could walk and that I didn’t want to use the crutches any more. But he was very skeptical. But he asked me to go and carry out a thorough X-ray and test. I did. The results baffled him. Then he told me that if I felt strong, I should throw away the crutches. He then told my mum to allow me go back to school. In school, I started preaching and telling people my story. We started a fellowship in secondary school. I went to Baptist High School in Benin.

After that, I went to the university. Under the leadership of Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, I started a fellowship on campus. It was Youths for Christ Fellowship at Abraka, Delta State University. It was then called Bendel State University, Abraka Campus. After school, I went into business. But after a while, Pastor Oyakhilome and a few others began to encourage me to go into the ministry. The signs were there. When I got healed, I was praying for people and miracles were happening. Pastor Chris then drew me closer and mentored me. And then I got into ministry.

 

You were born exactly on October 1, 50 years ago. How do you feel clocking 50?

Pastor Okoh: I never knew I would live past age 13 because of the health crisis that I had. I saw many corpses at that age as they were moved around in the hospital. I would ask the doctors and my mum if I would survive. Here I am today. Now, I want to build hospitals, especially orthopedic hospitals. Medical science helped me stay alive before divine intervention came. I intend to grow more churches but I want to do more humanitarian services.

 

Is this the Nigeria of your dream?

Pastor Okoh: No. But we will get there. The best is coming out of Nigerians because of the failure of governance. The average Nigerian has created his own economy independent of what is happening in the country. God will make us better.

You May Also Like:

Crises: CAC clerics want FG to set aside ‘National day of prayer’