TANURE OJAIDE

Tanure Ojaide, born in 1948 in Nigeria, is a prolific writer of both poetry and fiction. Among his numerous honors are the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region in 1987, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award in 1988, the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry in 1988 and 1997, and the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Poetry Prize in 1988 and 1994. He is the author of novels such as Sovereign Body (2004), The Activist (2006), and Matters of Moment (2009), as well as more than a dozen poetry collections, including Children of Ironko and Other Poems (1973), The Eagle’s Vision (1987), The Blood of Peace (1991), When It No Longer Matters Where You Live (1999), and Waiting for the Hatching of a Cockerel (2008).

Under New Pastoral Management

(2009)

In Effurun, the Pentecostal churches had mushroomed in the streets at a weekly regularity that amazed many residents. A banner, bell, or crusade would invite passersby to such new churches. Often presided over by a single pastor or a couple, each new church took the form of a private or family business. However, a majority of the new churches that made Effurun look like a Christian town despite the many public shrines to native gods did not grow beyond their first few months, before becoming stunted. But there were a few exceptions.

The Church of the New Dawn had established itself as the most popular of the many new Pentecostal churches in the town. Nobody made fun of it as a family business center, as they did of the very small ones. Its congregation was a mixture of Christians from other faiths such as the Roman Catholic, Baptist, and Anglican, as well as converts attracted by the charismatic evangelist’s heartwarming sermons about here and now.

Those stricken by malaria too often, and who believed it was not caused by mosquito bites but some sinister power, came to Evangelist Peter for a permanent cure. So did those who believed they were working very hard and not becoming rich, but sinking deeper into hardship and penury; they came to the Church of the New Dawn for special prayers, for an upturn in their fortune. And many young women who could not find husbands, as well as married women whose husbands were philanderers, also came to the church for answers to their problems.

Men and women who dreamed of riches did not go to work on the days that Evangelist Peter wanted to say prayers about personal breakthroughs. Women who found it difficult to conceive came to break the curse on their wombs in the Church of the New Dawn. Such women left their men at home to attend regular all-night prayer vigils so that the evangelist could crush the demons making them sterile. Since most of the people suffered from diseases, hardship, and broken hearts, they came in droves for relief.

“It’s always never too late to get a cure for your problems,” Evangelist Peter would exhort his attentive congregation.

He often characterized his work as that of a spiritual doctor.

“You are currently besieged by dark forces of night, but you will certainly come into a new dawn!” he would tell his new converts.

“Alleluia!” they chorused.

“Whatever you want God to do for you will come true in the Church of the New Dawn,” he said.

“Amen!” reverberated in the church.

There was so much enthusiasm for this church that wives disobeyed their husbands and left the churches they had married in for the Church of the New Dawn.

Evangelist Peter was in his late thirties and still single. He was rather chubby but very agile in movement. He was the only single pastor of the many Pentecostal churches around. He had in one sermon wondered out loud why men and women hurried to marry when Jesus died still a bachelor at thirty-three. His congregation believed he wanted to give his whole energy, time, and attention to God’s work.

Evangelist Peter also cited the many mature women such as Martha and Mary Magdalene who did not marry, but assisted Jesus in his mission. Members of his congregation did not know how to interpret his many reflections on marriage, but felt he was biding his time to get a wife suitable for his pastoral mission. Better to be patient to catch the right woman than be impatient and be ruined by a jezebel, such people reasoned to explain the marital status of Evangelist Peter.

He was always dressed neatly in a white, blue, or black suit and appeared well groomed for every service, which was an opportunity for him to show how kind God had been to him. His choice of the type of suit to wear for service was informed by the spirit of the time. On happy days, thanksgiving services, and the annual harvest, he wore immaculate white. Dark blue was for ordinary times, while the black suit was for sober moments.

“God is so kind, God is so good; my God is fantastic,” he asked his congregation to repeat.

And they did so with rebounding passion. They expected so much from God and they believed that, through Evangelist Peter’s intervention, their hopes would be realized.

“My God is a trustworthy God,” he sang.

There is nothing a good Christian wants that God will not give to the person; through prayers the human and the divine can dialogue, he told his church members.

On Sundays, as Evangelist Peter railed against witches, wizards, and demons from the pulpit, loudspeakers, specially mounted on the church’s rooftop, would blaze his message of defeating evil forces with special prayers. Every passerby heard his holy message. The neighborhood heard him.

“Jesus will make you vanquish all sorts of demons. No witch or wizard can penetrate one covered by the blood of Jesus. You in the arms of Jesus are the winner. Say ‘I am a winner!’”

“I am a winner!” the congregation would chorus.

“Praise the Lord!”

“Alleluia!”

Those who felt vulnerable before suspected diabolic forces holding them down in life or threatened with poverty, accidents, sickness, or death flocked to the church for protection. Evangelist Peter was their shield against evil forces. His church would also ensure their salvation. These salvation-seekers had something to hold on to so as to be secure and safe from a myriad of perils. In Evangelist Peter’s view, Jesus was a giant that his flock held to or just came to for protection. The presence of a giant or his proximity was great protection for the neighbors. Jesus was their family man or neighbor, he explained.

“If now you have no food to eat, Jesus will fill your plate with enough yams to last you all your life. Believe in the Son of God and He will work miracles for you!” he preached.

The frequent split and subsequent breakups in the Baptist and Anglican churches benefited the Church of the New Dawn. Every personality squabble in the other churches left a group drifting to Evangelist Peter’s church rather than suffering the humiliation of their faction being defeated.

Also those Catholics who felt that their church was too rigid and took no cognizance of modern life found it convenient to become members of the Church of the New Dawn. Among such were divorcees who could not remarry in the Catholic Church but were allowed to have new partners in the Church of the New Dawn. Evangelist Peter was silent on polygamy.

“Only God the Father is the judge,” he told his congregation on this issue.

That opened the way for a few polygamists in the church to pass the word to others outside who needed a church to worship in. Evangelist Peter welcomed everybody who wanted to know God into his church.

The rather tall and smooth-faced evangelist was happy. He glowed. He walked with a swagger, which, though it looked natural, came from confidence in his pastoral mission. His crowded church was the envy of other new churches that could barely draw fifty people into the rented or uncompleted buildings they used for Sunday worship or service at other times. Two nearby mushroom churches whose services used to be drowned by the loudspeakers of the Church of the New Dawn closed to join Evangelist Peter’s congregation. He praised the Lord for His kind mercies.

Evangelist Peter practiced what his congregation called humility and modesty. He had a Mercedes Benz 280 and not a Toyota Land Cruiser or a Lincoln Navigator that other pastors of the few bigger churches around drove. Besides, he drove himself. He had rejected pleas by his congregation for him to have a driver.

“What do I need a driver for when I can drive myself?” he asked those who made such a suggestion to him.

“Maybe when I become older, I’ll need a driver. Certainly not now,” he told them.

He often took along one or two of his church members as he desired on trips that were described as “church mission.” His congregation so revered him that whoever was chosen for a “church mission” felt blessed. Others yearned for such a blessing but discovered that Evangelist Peter tended to select the same woman or others for his trips to advance the faith.

 

* * *

The church building was imposing not only because of its size but also because of its sophisticated architecture. It was oval, rather like a dome in shape. Perched on the hilly part of town and surrounded by lush green vegetation it stood alone, dominating the landscape. From the low surroundings, the valley that was the main town, one could not look up north without being captured by the spectacle of the oval house of God. It was grand even from a distance. It was like the huge mansion of a rich man with refined tastes. And it held in its precincts a solemnity comparable to any cathedral that the evangelist had entered in Rome in one of his several pilgrimages there.

The church compound was floored with concrete and the roads were tiled. From the spacious parking lot to the church was laid a red carpet of shiny tiles. Different types of plants and flowers beautified the landscape. Eucalyptus, whispering pines, hibiscus, crotons, and exotic palms brought a certain natural harmony to the church compound.

The floor of the church itself was of terrazzo and glazed when cleaned, as was often done by a group of women volunteers led by Magdalene, wife of Elder James Ogbe. The seats were the most comfortable of any church around and had cushions; the evangelist’s special chair was of imported Italian leather and burgundy in color—he was, as head of the flock, a special shepherd and his seat was comparable to a monarch’s throne.

The eye-catching building had imitation fresco windows at the upper level and real frescoes at the bottom. The ceiling was a splendid work of art. The heavy cross hanging above the altar shone day and night, displaying the suffering Christ with blood splattered over his body. It was heart-rending to look at this image for too long. Suffering such nerve-racking pain that He could have avoided as the Son of God was the ultimate sacrifice, Evangelist Peter told his congregation, mindful that in the society no son of the king would suffer for the sake of his father’s subjects.

Five years earlier, Evangelist Peter, moved by missionary zeal after waking from a dream of one day becoming a saintly man, after years of debauchery, had gone to the United States to raise money to convert the many pagans that still frustrated God’s work and needed to be converted into light, as he told his various white donors who lavishly contributed towards his church in Nigeria. He felt he needed the American connection since his country men and women respected what came from outside rather than what was homegrown. He had seen how American and European pastors drew mammoth crowds in their crusading missions all over the country.

“The devil is having a field day among my people. I need to bring God to rout Satan and his evil angels from their midst. Today my people live in darkness; they need God to see light. Your dollars will bring light and God to them,” he had pleaded.

The pastor of the American host church he had visited saw a cause that needed to be pursued with vigor and so challenged his congregation to come out with a sufficient amount of dollars to make God proud of them. It was just after the Thanksgiving holiday and everybody was looking forward to the Christmas season.

“Instead of spending all your money in buying gifts in a few days, let your gift go to God,” he said.

“Amen,” the congregation chorused.

“This is the only opportunity we all have to contribute our little quota to the building of the house of light in dark Africa. Do you want to be counted out of this noble cause?” he asked.

“No!” was the thunderous response.

“Let your best gift this season be given to the needy people of Africa,” he admonished them. “God will reward you a hundredfold for the saving of lives that your contribution will bring about in Africa. Let them in Africa see God and light!”

“Amen,” the congregation chorused.

“Let the lost people of Africa be saved!” he shouted.

“Amen!”

And the American Christians gave what pleased the visiting pastor and his host church. Those who had inherited money from slave-owning parents saw an opportunity to be free from the moral burden that was always weighing heavily on their minds. Such donors gave out hefty sums. Those who gambled regularly and made it, but knew that Jesus had condemned gambling in the temple, saw the opportunity to relieve their minds of that age-old sin. Many whites who had felt guilty in their racist treatment of blacks throughout their lives wanted to redeem themselves by being supporters of the cause of Christianizing Africa. Different groups for their own reasons gave out so much money to free their minds from excoriating thoughts and deeds of the past.

It was enough money to build a fine church. Peter felt contented because his foreign mission was worth the pain of the physical exertion and personal humiliation at European airports where young men in uniform questioned him as if he were a drug smuggler or someone running from his country for residence in Europe or North America. His youth and boyish looks fitted the profile of drug traffickers and illegal immigrants that airport security worldwide screened thoroughly; that caused so much embarrassment to a man wearing a golden cross and a pastor’s collar.

The American donors would not have been disappointed with what the African evangelist did with the money he had raised from them. The impressive church building spoke loudly and clearly for itself.

The pastor had from the inauguration of the church taken the name of Evangelist Peter. He had become the rock upon which the new church would stand and grow. The church would be the beacon of light in a dark landscape, he had envisaged.

Five years later the church was as solidly rooted in the community as if it had been there from the beginning of times. Even the older churches did not have as passionate and devoted a congregation as the Church of the New Dawn’s. No service in any other church in town could boast of more numbers. No church event elsewhere in town was more crowded than anything done in the Church of the New Dawn. No congregation was more loyal and more generous than that of the Church of the New Dawn. Members of the church took literally the paying of tithes and did so without Evangelist Peter beating it into their ears as other pastors did, but without success. The Church of the New Dawn had become a model church in the area. All other Christians looked to the church on the green-clad hill with envy and admiration.

 

* * *

One Sunday morning, in the season of Lent, only two weeks to Easter, at 11 a.m. the congregation of the church came as usual to their place of worship for their weekly service which usually lasted from late morning to late afternoon. The church members looked to the service as to a great event in their lives and had dressed as for a popular festival. The Sunday service was a weekly festival that they waited for to fulfill a strong yearning that was at once social and spiritual and so compelling. Despite the five hours of service, they looked to the hours spent there as the time they had dedicated to God. The drumming, singing, and dancing brought spiritual energy that radiated into every pore of the body. They were too busy the rest of the week to think of God. The rest of the week they put into practice Evangelist Peter’s recommendations about achieving wealth and fighting diabolical forces that stood in their way to success. During that period they sought the breakthroughs that their pastor told them to expect from God.

Evangelist Peter had always kept the main door of the church shut on Sundays until fifteen minutes before the service began. Members of the congregation who came early had to stay in a line and, as soon as the door opened, would rush in to occupy the front seats. They were usually in their fine clothes and jewelries, and would converse and shake hands. The men would shake hands with the women, and the women had the same opportunity to shake hands with men, which was not common practice outside the church premises. Sometimes Evangelist Peter would shake the hands of the first fifty people or so in the queue before they were let into the church. He would hug a few women who often took responsibilities for church activities. Magdalene Ogbe always came early and often received a hug from the evangelist; her husband would receive a handshake. Many members of the congregation believed Evangelist Peter was a modern-day prophet with his hands soft like a ripe banana.

This Sunday the usual humming of conversation could be heard. Many women showed off the latest fashions. New headties, new styles of blouses, and new fabrics bought from Lagos or imported from Marks & Spencer in London or from Dubai. They wore the different types of gold they craved for—Saudi, Italian, English, Dubai, or Indian. The men talked about where they had visited or the new contracts they had got from government agencies. This was a good part of Sunday, the showing-off time before the service began.

However, those coming late could see that the crowd had grown and there was no line to fall into. It was a large crowd but in groups of threes, fours, and fives—a forest full of clumps of trees.

This situation was because the early birds had found out that the church door was still shut even when it was already eleven o’clock. Was Evangelist Peter, always punctual to the minute, late this morning or why were people still outside? the latecomers wondered. He had never been late for service and they did not think that he was late that very Sunday morning. The evangelist had the mind of God and so could not forget time, more so the time for worship on Sunday. He would not want to keep his flock waiting to worship God. Something must be amiss, they thought, but could not guess from a distance. There had been no word that their pastor was sick or that he had traveled. Evangelist Peter was always well especially as he had boasted of being covered by the blood of Christ that repelled all physical and spiritual ailments from him.

The Sunday service attendants who had come first, and so were in front, saw what they thought was a prank. Who would intrude into the church premises at night to do this? What they saw was not only one poster but many. Could this happen? they asked. Their church building had been sold to another pastor. On the hand-carved huge front door was posted the boldly written “Under New Pastoral Management.” The same poster was pasted on different parts of the front wall of the church.

The new pastor, an imposing man like a tall boxer, and his wife, both dressed as if they belonged to royalty, introduced themselves as the new owners and pastors of the church, which they had bought from the former owner—Evangelist Peter.

“I am Pastor Emmanuel and my wife is Magdalene,” the new pastor said.

They showed the signed agreement to those close enough to read the paper they flaunted before the crowd and asked the people to go in for worship.

“After all, the house remains the house of God. I am only God’s messenger to bring you good news,” Pastor Emmanuel said.

He was wearing a black suit as Evangelist Peter did on some Sundays. It was humid. He brought out a white handkerchief from one of his pockets and wiped sweat from his face. The sun was bright and one could feel the intense heat it had in store for the rest of the day.

There was division among the congregation as to whether to go in or leave.

“Let’s go in for worship,” one member of the congregation said; “you never can tell that this is God’s working and we have to accept it—He definitely works in a mysterious way. If the Almighty deems it necessary to give us a new pastor, let’s accept him. He may well be what we truly need.”

Adam had never liked Evangelist Peter and had felt he favored the pretty women over other members of the congregation.

“A church is not property that you sell for profit and then disappear to buy a cheaper one somewhere else,” Samuel argued.

Samuel was one of the few men that Evangelist Peter took out on church missions. He was in the church’s Finance Committee that rarely met and only to approve Evangelist Peter’s accounts, but still felt favored by being in the committee.

“We came to worship in Evangelist Peter’s church; now we are asked to be in Pastor Emmanuel’s church. It is only one God in the churches, really one church,” Adam said.

“Why did you leave the Catholic Church for the Church of the New Dawn if it is all one church?” Samuel asked Adam.

“We have put in so much energy and tithes into this church and whether or not it is sold, it remains our church,” a church member added.

“I can’t imagine myself worshiping in another church,” Adam told them.

“But the building alone is not the church. The pastor matters as well as the type of church,” another church member said.

“Evangelist Peter and I are both men of God chosen to minister to you. Let’s not argue before God’s house. Don’t be a doubting Thomas! Go in and you will be satisfied that God never fails in His mysterious ways,” Pastor Emmanuel told the gathered crowd at the door of his newly acquired church.

He could not imagine the people leaving. The failure of his takeover of the much coveted Church of the New Dawn would be disastrous for him. He had invested so much money into this new church and wanted it to continue to prosper so that he could give praise to the Lord for His kindness. Eighteen million naira was a huge sum of money to pay for a building and its congregation, but without the congregation the investment would be ruined, he pondered. The building was designed as a church and could not be converted into a block of flats, Pastor Emmanuel reflected. He just had to succeed by all means, if he was to avoid a business disaster.

Pastor Emmanuel had acquired the art of persuasion from a source that would remain a secret all his pastoral life. He believed that to fight the devil, he had to use all means necessary, including devilish techniques. That was how he justified to himself his going to a medicine man to make the charm of persuasion. The traditional healer had used a needle to poke his tongue to bleed and rubbed it with some medicine as he chanted an esoteric invocation. That, he assured the pastor, would make whoever listened to him accept what he said as truth and also carry out what he asked to be done. What was important in the end was his ability to convert more people to his church and exercise authority over their lives. With that Pastor Emmanuel felt he could enforce the paying of tithes without any hassle and preside over a prosperous church.

Pastor Emmanuel’s wife, Magdalene, was very supportive of her husband. She used to be called Grace but he made her change her name to Magdalene as soon as he became a pastor. That was a better Christian name than just Grace, he felt. Magdalene was the woman who had stood by Jesus even after his death. She had anointed Jesus. If Jesus had been an ordinary human, who wanted to marry, Pastor Emmanuel felt, the Son of God would have married no other woman but Magdalene.

Magdalene was a very charming woman whose dress, face, and smiles were as persuasive as the pastor’s words. She was tall and had a well-proportioned shape. She walked with grace and whatever she wore gave her a unique charm. Pastor Emmanuel remembered what it had taken him to succeed among her many suitors. He had spent hundreds of thousands of naira in cash and kind to earn her attention and affection. He had planned ahead his successful life of a God’s servant. Emmanuel and Magdalene formed a good partnership in the crusade against darkness and demons. Each found the other’s company fortunate, as their partnership became strong with an ever-expanding beatitude.

At the end of a long debate, which each side thought it would win or lose, depending on their tenacity to their viewpoint, the congregation was swayed over to enter the church by the new pastor and his wife.

“Can’t you give me the benefit of the doubt?” he asked, when he saw the opposing argument as gaining more support.

“My husband is a man of God that makes things to really happen. He knows how to pray, as a warrior knows how to fight his enemies,” Magdalene interjected.

The congregation, feeling guilty for arguing so noisily with a man of God beside his newly acquired church, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt that he asked for and went in. Though the old order of entering the church was not respected, they sat in their usual seats.

Nothing in the church had changed. The altar section, like other parts of the church, remained in the way they used to be arranged. Only one thing was absent and none there noticed it: the rose or other flower that Magdalene Ogbe used to place at the altar before Evangelist Peter started service. But that beautification only took place when Peter was there.

It was as if it was a normal Sunday service but without Evangelist Peter, whose baritone voice always held them spellbound. He could sing and he could dance. His lilting voice would rise to a crescendo as the percussion instruments brought his dance steps to a staccato movement. He had been the lead singer and the rest of the congregation the chorus. Similarly, he had been the lead dancer and his congregation followed his graceful and agile steps. In their minds, they wondered if Pastor Emmanuel could match the evangelist’s dexterity and talents in song and dance.

This first service at the Church of the New Dawn under new pastoral management proved to be a great success and more than pleased all present. There was something in Pastor Emmanuel’s voice that made them feel he could be trusted. Though he was in his forties, he preached like a wise old man who knew life and could advise others. He had a different voice from the evangelist’s, but his was like a river running leisurely towards the ocean, sure of where it was going and dissolving itself into the wide waters.

When it came to preaching, Pastor Emmanuel performed the sermon he had practiced meticulously at home for weeks. He knew the consequence of not doing his utmost best in his first sermon in the new church.

“Alleluia!”

“Praise the Lord!” echoed from the pews.

“I say Alleluia,” he repeated in a stronger voice.

“Praise the Lord!” the church reverberated thunderously.

“Al-le-lu-ia!”

“Praise the Lord!”

He was now primed enough to start to perform his sermon.

As his sermon progressed, many people began nodding approval of his lessons. Some rose to shout “Amen!” to his prayers. And the whole church was on its feet to dance with Pastor Emmanuel and his wife. The congregation did not want the long service to end. It was as though they were suspended in a planet of pleasurable spirituality.

Pastor Emmanuel was an artist and knew how to weave functionality and beauty into his craft. He was an experienced performer who took the cues from his enthusiastic audience. He knew how to connect with his audience and did wonderfully with the new congregation.

Pastor Emmanuel and his wife felt his first day in his new church was a huge success. The three offerings accompanied by drumming and dancing fetched a staggering amount that made them smile. No wonder, they thought, Evangelist Peter struck a hard bargain with them. No pastor who made so much money every Sunday would sell his church unless he really had to, they now realized.

 

* * *

Once back home, some members of Pastor Emmanuel’s congregation started to hear strange things about Evangelist Peter. They started to add so many things together. It started as a rumor, which gossip easily transmitted to every attentive ear. The absence of Elder James Ogbe’s wife at church the past Sunday fueled the rumors and gossip. Some women had looked out for her when Pastor Emmanuel introduced his wife as Magdalene, the same name as Elder James’ wife. The Magdalene they knew, Mrs. Ogbe, was not in church that day. Now they remembered that the ritual of the flower being placed on the altar was not performed. “Where was Magdalene today?” many started to ask. They imagined she had not heard about the change of ownership of the church and might still be on an assignment that Evangelist Peter had arranged before he sold the church.

“Did she get wind of the sale of the church and had stayed home in protest?” others started to ask.

It was common knowledge that Magdalene Ogbe had been a favorite of Evangelist Peter. At thirty-seven, she was much younger than her husband in his late fifties. She had had no child in their ten years of marriage and looked very much in her prime in beauty. She was the leader of the women’s group and reported to the evangelist their discussions and resolutions. She had traveled many times with Evangelist Peter on church duties out of town, and to conventions out of state that lasted many days.

Evangelist Peter had complimented her service publicly in the church. He always embraced and hugged her on Sunday mornings before worship, when he came to her; he shook hands with most other women.

Magdalene, the name that the evangelist had given to her, stuck. She had been Agnes, which the evangelist said was not as Christian as Magdalene. Unknown to Elder James Ogbe, his wife and Evangelist Peter had been having a secret relationship and she had received numerous favors from the evangelist—always in the delegation traveling on behalf of the church. Rumors had started, but none wanted to imagine that the evangelist could do such an immoral thing as sleeping with his church member’s wife.

Magdalene went often to see Evangelist Peter to pray for her at different times of the day. Church members noticed her frequenting the pastor’s office and home but their minds did not wander beyond her not conceiving all the years of marriage. They pitied her and her husband—such a gentle and godly couple!

There were rumors too that Elder James Ogbe was either impotent or weak as a man, but again, nobody wanted to imagine such a beautiful woman married to a eunuch.

“How could that beautiful woman have married such a mature man without a taste of the thing first?” They asked many questions.

When such rumors first came, the bearers were seen as agents of Satan.

“Don’t defame a man of God,” one member of the church had said.

“The good ones will always be smeared by the rumormongers of this world,” another had added.

“Those who perjure the evangelist will roast in hell,” another swore.

 

* * *

Magdalene Ogbe had conceived. It was a miracle that only she and Evangelist Peter knew about. They did not expect it, but it happened. They accepted the crop whose seed they had been planting.

The two secret lovers went underground for a few days. Only Pastor Emmanuel and his Magdalene knew that Evangelist Peter and Magdalene Ogbe had migrated to the United States to start a new life. As part of the contract that included the sale of the Church of the New Dawn, Pastor Emmanuel had secretly married Evangelist Peter and Magdalene before they took off. That was after they confessed their sins to Pastor Emmanuel who forgave them. That also was part of the contract. Only his wife, the namesake of the new bride, was witness to the ceremony that took place in Pastor Emmanuel’s house after midnight.

“We are entering a new dawn,” Evangelist Peter quipped.

“God bless both of you!” the pastor pronounced.

“And God also bless you with the Church of the New Dawn that I hand over to you,” Peter told the pastor and his wife, as he handed to them the keys of the church.

That night Evangelist Peter and Magdalene headed into darkness not to spend a conjugal night in bed but to travel fast to catch their plane taking off from Lagos later that morning. Their minds were focused on where they were going and the new life as husband and wife they were going to live in God’s own country.

No member of the Church of the New Dawn, including Elder James Ogbe, knew where they had emigrated that night. Magdalene had told her husband that she was going for a retreat in Lagos and would be away for a week. He did not ask her any questions about her travels for religious events, including this one for which she had filled a big trunk with clothes, shoes, and jewelry.

To the congregation of the Church of the New Dawn, Evangelist Peter and Magdalene might as well have died or gone to heaven. Or hell, if members of the church knew what had really transpired between them in the many years they had been under the pastoral leadership of Evangelist Peter! As for Magdalene, the women would say, “She was looking for more than conception or a baby from God under cover of prayers—a new and virile man!”