Nature made it that no human being has knowledge of what could happen even in the next minute. We may have plans and aspirations for each day but all hopes are anchored in our faith in God for full realization as no one can boast of the certainty of our times. Most of the time people believe in ihe chi fotere meaning our total dependence on God’s absolute design.
This is the reason why most believers in Christ will always rely on God in all life’s endevours. But the foolish ones move about sheepishly and what ever they encounter along their part they take hence they have no control over life and existence. A Christian mind is better even though ordinarily he has no power over life and his existence yet he controls life to an extent through a cordial relationship with God. Once a Christian mind, hands over the totality of his life to God, God takes over. As a well experienced pilot that God is He has never failed in the business of directing man’s affairs. That was the case in Owerri the day the Boko Haram agents invaded our peace-loving city of Owerri. Like every normal night, the inhabitants of this serene city went to bed as usual to rest their tired bones and veins having worked through out the week.
It is a known fact that the Imo populace is made up mainly of Civil servants who work from Monday through Friday and use Saturdays to attend to functions like weddings and burials. Some also unwind the pressures of the week’s work load on Saturday by going to clubs and the numerous joints that dot the Owerri landscape as a way of relieving the stress. As a peaceful city they have always gone about their business in peace and this they did on the Saturday June 14, 2014 the day preceding the Sunday that the bombs were discovered in one of the populated and popular Pentecostal churches in the city, the Winners Chapel.
Just like the biblical saying that when the sons of men went to bed the enemy stole in at night and planted tars in the midst of the wheat. This was actually what happened that day. While the inhabitants went to bed peacefully, the suicide bombers stole into the farm yard and garden of God, into God’s tabernacle and planted not tars but bombs. What guts? Well they had the guts and the effrontery because they knew not the God of Israel whom the Christians in this country and the genuine Muslims serve. And because they are far from the God of heaven, they may have taken him for granted as they may have seen him as one of their local gods, who has eyes but cannot see, mouth that cannot talk and legs that cannot walk.
Little did they know that the God we serve is the one with a
capital ‘G’ and not the one written in small letter.
The perpetrators of this un-despicable evil never realized that there is a great difference between, the real and the fake. The difference is that the capital ‘G’ God possesses great powers even the power to discover bombs. As soon as the evil men planted the bombs in two different locations of the church, the Host of Heavens got the alert and signal immediately and automatically the wombs that carried the bombs went into labour and the delivery report was a still birth. The giver of life immediately ceased life from the bombs even as He opened the eyes of the security men on guard of the city to locate the bombs. That was how the Almighty God averted what could have been the murder of all murders down here in our peaceful Owerri City. The most glorious thing about it, was that God finished this battle even while men were asleep, an indication of his Almightiness and Sovereignty. What a good God we serve?
I equally recalled that day that I went to church as early as 7:15am to participate in our congregational morning prayers. As the leader of the prayer that day, I remembered that we spent quality time praying against Boko Haram and their attacks in other states especially without knowing that they had entered the city of Owerri the night before!! Can you see how God works?
When the news of the bomb discovery got to my quarters my heart was heavy. The reason for the heaviness was because I never believed in my wildest imagination that the Boko Hram Set could ever venture into any city in the South East because I believe that we have enough security and that the Niger and Benue Rivers will be too hard for them to cross. But alas? They seemed to have conquered all those natural and man-made forces and entered Owerri of all places in the South East. Thanks be to God Almighty who did not allow them to perform their enterprise. If God had allowed it, the city of Owerri would not have contained the stream of blood that would have flown. NO! NO!! NO!!! the land has no space to accommodate such flows of human blood. We have never experience it and God will never allow it to happen.
I had also wondered what could have happened to the dead and the injured considering the fact that our hospitals were shut down as a result of the strike embarked upon by medical doctors and medical personnel’s in Imo-State then. God saw and knew all these and averted the disaster from befalling our city. Suffice it to say that I learnt one or two lessons as a result of that bomb incident. One was that we should not neglect every prayer altered especially those said in his sanctuary. Every day Christian faithfuls gather in different churches to communion with God. Those prayers are never in vain. The Winners Chapel incidence I must confess strengthened my faith and belief in God. It also strengthened my prayer life. I got to know that once I serve Him sincerely and prayerfully that He hears me. Second lesson for me was the realization of the fact that God is not far from His people. Heavens may be indescribable compared to earth but our God is closer than we imagined. God is ever available to those who believe and call on Him with sincere heart and he demonstrated this fact in the Winners Chapel bomb exposure that Sunday morning. May His name be praised for ever. Amen!!
I also heard about the bomb presence in the City School along
Wetheral Road Owerri. There again God demonstrated His power. May His name be praised Amen!
To the Boko Haram people assuming they are still around our peaceful Owerri City, I have a little piece of advice for them. They ought to have known by now that there is no need wasting their energy in the South East especially in Imo State because they cannot and will never succeed. Imo people are good spirited people who love and serve God. God cannot allow Boko Haram to destroy such souls because they belong to Him. And more also, we are not militants by nature, we are not killers and murderers like you. We don’t share in your belief- that it is only when you kill the so called infidels that you can make heaven, and as far as you are concerned Christians are infidels. On the contrary you are wrong because the true infidels are murderers and suicide bombers like you. Such people are the people who have no space in heaven because they are sinners. One of the ten commandments declares. “Thou shall not kill” so if you kill others you will go to hell and not God’s kingdom.
I conclusion I plead that you people (Boko Haram) should leave South East alone, and in fact every other section of Nigeria because we are not birds of the same feather and so can never flock together.
Journey mercies as you get back to where you come from.
God have mercy on you!
