Professor Nelson Fashina

Q: You are a clergy man?

A: I am a prophet.

Q: What was your journey to the prophetic endeavour?

A: It is a kind of epic journey. When I was six years old, I knew that I had certain things that were peculiar and special to me. Then, anything I predicted about people would come to pass. Naturally, as a kid, I was spiritual and I knew I had psychic affiliation with nature, in fact, fauna and flora in general uses of leaves. At times, I underwent moments of spiritual transformation, in which I would see myself coming out of my body. I could see myself playing with some friends under the trees while I was sitting somewhere. I was seeing vision. In a moment, I would faint and they would carry me to herbal doctor and pronounce some incantations on me and I would come back to life. Those were part of my childhood life that is inexplicable to the ordinary mind. Now that I’ve grown up, I’ve crystalized meanings to certain happenings.

Q: Which church do you attend?

A: I am a prophet in Celestial Church of Christ, CCC.

Q: Is that where you started your Christian life?

A: No. I wasn’t born a celestial. By the time I was born, Christianity had already crept into the indigenous religion of my paternal family that I grew up with. So, they practised both Christianity and indigenous religion together. In 1968, my paternal grandmother joined the Church of the Lord, “Aladura”. Before that time, we practised traditional religion. Every day, in my father’s compound, they made sacrifices. We did our traditional yam festival. I grew up in that environment and I was keenly interested. I carried masquerade when I was young. So, I grew up to be mythical, mystical and believe in traditional religion.

In Aladura Church, Baba Ositelu and Baba Ikusemiya used to give prophesies. I used to think that they were liars because they would pray for about five minutes and deliver prophecies for over an hour until around late 70s when I started encountering problems. At that time, I had grown to know my mother and would secretly go to speak with her because my paternal relatives must not know that I was seeing her. After telling her some experiences I was going through, she would take me to Celestial, her church and ask the prophet to pray for me. Invariably, she exposed me to Celestial which I later joined. I wasn’t a full member. I was only going there for prayers. The reason I didn’t want to join Celestial was that the wife of my father’s elder brother who maltreated me in Jos was a celestial prophet. I thought Celestial people were wicked people who couldn’t be God’s people.

There was a time my mother was sick and I had to visit her in the church where she was observing retreat, what Celestial called, “Abo”. They asked me to do seven days “Abo”. When the prophets were having the prophet service, I joined them at the mercy land and the spirit came upon me and I started prophesying. At about 20 years, I became a prophet. The leaders would put me in the spirit and I would prophesy for them. I was enjoying the feat because people were revering me. The big men were coming to me and I would attend to them and they would give me money.

As an undergraduate student, I used to be in the church compound prophesying for the people, I was attached to the shepherd. At a stage, I had certain experiences that made me to stop attending Celestial. One woman from another state came to see me for prophesy and I prophesied to her. The woman had marital problem. She complained that her husband drove her away and married another wife. In my sub-conscious, I felt she was cheated and that I had to do something to restore the marriage. I did spiritual work for her. When I slept in the night, I dreamt that a wind came and carried me to a place where some witches tied some people meant for ritual. I got there and set them free. When the witches came, they wanted to attack me and the wind took me up with those people that I set free and deposited us in front of the church. I entered the church and an angel came out of the altar and told me that I shouldn’t have done the work I did for the woman because the woman was the cause of her problem.

Professor Nelson Fashina

When I woke up, I was worried and went into one week fasting and prayer. At the end of the prayer, I had a dream that the whole sky came down. Before that, I had another dream that I was being tempted in my dream by a woman who made me to sleep with her and God rebuked me for that. The dream came to pass and I heard God instructing me that I should go to my closest friend and university classmate who was the former Tribune Managing Director, Dr. Segun Olatunji to pray with him. Segun was a Pentecostal. Immediately, around 5am, I went to him and met him praying. I told him my mission. We went into prayer. Segun was calling the prayer points. Suddenly, I started speaking in tongues. Afterward, I went back to my church and recounted what happened to my brethren who didn’t believe. At the time, I felt that God wanted me to start another ministry so, I stopped attending Celestial and started attending campus fellowship. I was well received.

In the new church, anybody I prayed for would receive instant healing. My NYSC period was a period of confusion because I didn’t know whether to continue with Pentecostal church or go back to Celestial. However, I also found a lot of disappointments and hypocrisy in the Pentecostal and I decided to go back to Celestial.

Q: And today you have a church of your own?

A: My own church came around 2001 when I had become fully matured and a senior lecturer in the university. It was prophesied to me in 1981 that God said that I should become a full prophet and own a church but I declined because I wanted to complete my education. That prophecy came up several times in different places but affirmatively, I said no because I wanted education. It came in 1991/92 while I was working as a lecturer and simultaneously running my PhD programme on scholarship. About three weeks after that time, I had an exchange scholarship and went to England. By the time I came back, with that international exposure, I became more determined that education was it. After rounding off my PhD in UI, I went back to Ado-Ekiti where I had lectured for 10 years and rose to the level of a senior lecturer. I joined UI as a senior lecturer in 1998.

Q: So, all along, you’ve been combining secular job with spiritual job?

A: Exactly. In 2000, I got Fulbright fellowship to go to the USA. After the fellowship, I came back but later decided to go and live in USA when another prophecy came that in 1981 and 1992 respectively, I refused to lay an altar for the Lord as instructed by God. Now this is 2001, God is reminding me again that I should be ready to face the consequence if I remained adamant. I later fell ill. I had a broken marriage but I had remarried in the USA and I wanted to go and meet my wife in USA but couldn’t go because I was ill. I went to hospital but the doctor did not find anything that was wrong with me. I started going from Celestial churches to Cherubim churches and to Pentecostal churches for solution. No solution.

One day, I went to a place and a pastor in a Pentecostal church told me that the Lord wanted to use me. Also the woman prophet I went to see in Cherubim Church told me that God didn’t want me to travel abroad because he wanted to use me. After that, I went to see my friend who was a prophet in another parish of Celestial who also told me the same story that God wanted to use me. I now said okay, God, I am ready. The two plots of land at Egbeda, just 500 metres before the toll gate that I bought to build a duplex, I yielded it up. We cleared land and I laid the Celestial altar there under palm fronds. Instantly, the sickness left and we started to worship there. I used my salaries to build a church and God was working with me. Anything I say would come to pass. Anybody I pray for get result. The church was built inside a thick forest. Within a couple of years, people started getting land and building houses until the place became well populated. The church also grew sporadically. I built it single-handedly without anybody’s contribution and I spent millions of Naira. We celebrated the 15th adult harvest last August 14.

Q: How does Christianity relate to traditional medicine which you also practice?

A: They relate very well. Initially, as a young Christian, I thought it was sinful and demonic to practise indigenous medicine with Christianity but having been internationally and intellectually exposed, I now know that there is nothing wrong about that. Today, I have and I am still researching and devoting my research to discovering more of indigenous knowledge production. Recently, at a lecture I delivered at the Yoruba Language Flagship Programme in UI, I exposed my audience to the aspect of indigenous knowledge, and distinction between religion and culture, and the need for them to separate voodooism and juju from religion, and religion from Yoruba indigenous science, especially in traditional medicine. I also told them that idolatry must be clinically defined in the sense that idolatry is the worship of another god in replacement of Yahweh who is otherwise called Olodumare, God, Olorun and Allah. I said the Yorubas in their practice of indigenous knowledge and tradition, Ogun, Oya, Sango, etc, are not idolaters, in the sense that Yoruba practices monotheism which is the recognition of only one God, Olodumare (God) as supreme. I stated further that the lesser deities don’t occupy the same supremacy of position as the gods of the Egyptians, Amelekites, Amorites, Jebusites, and Babylonians and the idols in the Bible where the gods in Bible history were used to replace the Supreme Being.

That was why Aaron made the golden calf and said ‘‘Hear ye oh! Israel, this be the god, golden calf, that brought thee out of Egypt”. And God’s anger was kindled and they were smitten in his anger. But the Yorubas are different. They don’t say that Ogun, Oya, Sango and others are their creators or their god but were personages that actually played mediation role in introducing them to God. Therefore, they were not meant to be worshipped but just to be celebrated. It is only God that can be worshipped. That is the Yoruba doctrine, theology and theogony. If some of our people and researchers could take time to research Yoruba culture, indigenous tradition, theology and theogony, they would discover that “Ifa” literary corpus and divination philosophy, Orunmila didn’t equate himself with God.

“Orunmila baba Ifa” did not say he is God, neither did he equate himself with God. The Ifa religious testament says … It divines for Orunmila who will bring to the world the message of “Olodumare”. Therefore, “Ifa” didn’t call himself God. He said, he was a messenger of God. He was preaching the gospel of belief in God before Christ came. So, in “Irosun -yeku”, where two “Odus” meet, …this “Ifa” verse is where “Orunmila” said there would be a virgin named “Oyigi” who would give birth to a son called “Ela”. “Ela” would be the saviour of the world because he would be the voice and word of God. In him, was created everything that God “Olodumare” ever created and it is through him human beings will die no more. That is Christ! But Orunmila” didn’t call him Christ. He called Christ as “Ela”. Every Yoruba person knows that “Ela” means Christ.

That is why we sing in the church, “Olorun Ela, Oyigiyigi Olorun kikida agbara”. “Oyigi” is Mary in the Bible. So why are we quarrelling? There is therefore, a kind of symmetry, and unity of doctrine between Islam, Christianity and traditional worship because they all recognize Christ. Jesus of Christian is Yisa to the Muslims and “Ela” to traditional worshippers. This shows that the people that engage in religious bigotry, and intolerance are hypocrites or ignorant. They do this because they are ignorant of the epistemic fact.