In a recent interview with OLUSEYE OJO, he said that Nigeria’s growing insecurity, marked by banditry and terrorism, cannot be solved with cold statistics or routine military updates.
Instead, he claims that true resolution would only manifest when President Bola Tinubu looks at the gruesome murder, torture or abduction of any citizen through the agonising lens of a grieving parent, viewing every single victim not as a collateral casualty of statehood, but as the heart-breaking loss of the President’s own child.
Set against a background of increasing grassroots vulnerabilities, rural displacements and an economy losing critical foreign investments to safer continental neighbours, the cleric serves a prophetic, non-partisan charge to the nation’s political elite.
In this interview, Bishop Oke explains the structural constraints of the body of Christ, exposes the sophisticated economic syndicates behind rural terror and takes off the veil on the massive, multi-million naira, humanitarian relief interventions the church quietly deploys across Nigeria’s worst-hit regions.
What is the core message the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) is trying to pass across to the authorities at this moment as the level of insecurity across the nation reaches a boiling point?
“We are burdened for Nigeria today because we have lost our sense of value for human life and its sanctity. The level of banditry, kidnapping, violence, insecurity and savage killings all over the Nigerian landscape has risen to an intolerable height. It has become a situation where every Nigerian should cry out to God for divine intervention and to our governments for immediate and effective action.
What is happening in Nigeria is more than just taking lives. It breaks our national unity, scares away vital foreign investors, causes a massive brain drain as our best minds leave, and fatally weakens the bond between the citizens and the state. It has created a pervasive wave of insecurity and terror that ensures that the Nigerian people no longer feel safe anywhere in their own country. “We are heavily burdened as this intolerable violence is tragically being normalised in Nigeria.
You mentioned the loss of humaneness. Could you describe the particular systemic failures and regional carnage that led to this urgent cry from the PFN?
We are burdened for the loss of our very humanity. See the unchecked rampage of bandits and murderous herdsmen killing Nigerian farmers on their own farms. Consider the Boko Haram insurgents, who are deploying the noble religion of Islam to unleash atrocious violence on peaceful Nigerians, without any restraint across our national landscape.
The destructive historical and contemporary path of this failure. Many Chibok girls are still in captivity years after they were abducted en masse by Boko Haram insurgents. “Leah Sharibu is still held in captivity by religious kidnappers simply because she refused to renounce her Christian faith and the Nigerian state did nothing. The killers of Deborah Samuel who was brutally burnt to death in Sokoto by a murderous mob for mentioning the name of Jesus? Nothing happened.
Since then, Taraba, Plateau, Benue states and Southern Kaduna have become killing fields on a daily basis. Similarly, Edo, Kogi and Ondo states have not been spared.
“Today, as we speak, some communities in Kwara State have been completely sacked by rampaging bandits carrying sophisticated guns and dangerous weapons.
Innocent people are being kidnapped, raped and killed again and again in large numbers across Borno, Niger, Sokoto, Kaduna and other states of the federation.
Oyo State is the newest killing field. This climaxed with the recent horrific abduction of some teachers and students, where one of the teachers, Mr. Michael Oyedokun, was gruesomely beheaded while another was shot dead.
Our political elite was carrying on business as usual during these satanic acts as if nothing was going on. These are unspeakable and despicable acts of terror,” he said.
You have pointed out that the President must look at every citizen as his child. How is that paternalistic duty to inform the government’s response to the current socioeconomic collapse and the flight of foreign investment?
Basically, all Nigerians are children of the president. The president is the father of all Nigeria, that is a basic principle of leadership and governance. So when one person is killed, one of his children has been killed. It should strike home to the leadership in that personal and painful way. When a citizen is brutally beheaded, humiliated, tortured and tormented, crying while they cut off his head, it means that one of the president’s children has undergone that horrible treatment.
It should never be a common news item. When the reality truly touches the hearts of our government leaders and they feel the deep personal pain of a father losing a child, then they will stand up and handle these situations decisively. That is what Nigerians want. They want a government that feels pain when its people suffer, and a leadership that acts with unwavering resolve to safeguard its home.
In terms of farming, all this violence is definitely affecting not only the farming profession, it is affecting every profession.
Farmers can’t tend their fields for fear of being raped, slaughtered or kidnapped, and this sets off a catastrophic chain reaction throughout the entire economic ecosystem. Food prices skyrocket, supply chains break down, and hunger is staring the nation in the face. It cripples markets and livelihoods well beyond the agricultural sector.
Look at our position in the world and our economy overall. At the moment, there are investors from developed countries who were planning to come to Nigeria because of our strategic advantage as the largest black nation in the world with a massive percentage of highly mobile and enterprising young men. We have a tremendously vibrant, energetic and intelligent youth population and this makes Nigeria a particularly attractive market for global capital. They are keen to invest here but the absence of reliable power and the insecurity are forcing them to move their capital to countries like Ghana and South Africa where they consider the business environment to be safer and more predictable.
We are losing billions of dollars in potential investments, losing jobs for our teeming youth, losing our competitive edge on the continent because we have failed to secure our territory.
Hence, the Nigerian government needs to rise up to the occasion and deal decisively with these criminals in our forests, in our farms, in our cities, and those attacking churches and mosques to slaughter citizens. No criminal should get away with it, no matter where they operate or who they target.
In many of these theatres of conflict the military has been deployed but the killings continue. Where does the disconnect lie?
There is a clear lack of firm political will on the part of our Government to crush these horrible evils. They have allowed this cancer to spread unchecked, making empty promises that have done absolutely no good.
Our governments are busy rehabilitating so called repentant Boko Haram killers and even drafting them into our security network instead of crushing terrorism, banditry and the likes! Hence the Nigerian military is becoming demilitarised.
And this is why our valiant Generals and their gallant soldiers are being slaughtered like chicken. Why? Because our security system has been totally infiltrated and fatally compromised from within.
Nigerians are fed up with this evil. They are tired of the seeming misplaced attention of the political class on winning elections by all means, rather than focusing the full weight of our law and federal might to crush the killers of Nigerians.
In response to this crisis, the PFN announced a three-day national fasting and prayer session from May 22-24, 2026. Can you tell me about the background, strategic goals and the real political position of the PFN behind this exercise?
The National Executive Council of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria held a meeting on the night of May 19, 2026, for fervent prayers and deliberations on the scary state of affairs in the country.
We, as a Pentecostal community, spread across every single state of Nigeria, resolved that we would stand together in spiritual warfare, fast and pray to God our Almighty Father to arise and scatter the enemies of Nigeria.
