Joan Yakubu
The General Overseer of Open Channel Bible Church, Gowon Estate, Egbeda, Lagos State, Pastor Darlington Ajitemisan, has instructed students of Fly High College Agility, Mile 12, Lagos, to shun crime and illicit drugs.
Speaking at the school premises, at ‘Youth Against Crimes’ advocacy programme, put together by Juliana Francis under the Female Journalists’ Leadership Project by Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, Ajitemisan, an ex-convict, said that the life of drugs addiction, abuse and cultism doesn’t serve any useful purpose, rather, the ends were disastrous.
Speaking on the topic, ‘Cultism, Drugs and Prison,’ Ajitemisan, a former assassin, told the students, that right from when he was a youth, he moved with bad set of people. He was rascally and stubborn, leading to his mother cursing him that he would never do well.
While explaining to the students that there was students’ cultism and other kinds of cult groups, Ajitemisan disclosed that he was once a member of the Ogboni cult.
According to him, he had been in and out of prisons several times, with his life being directionless, until his father showed him love.
He said: “My father told me that I was born to be somebody important. He blessed and urged me to go back to school. Before then, I was errand boy to Mighty Joe, a popular armed robber. As a youth, I was a drug courier for bad men. I urge you, avoid being stubborn and avoid the life of crime. Crime doesn’t pay. I ended up in prison several times. As a young man, if you are sent to prison, you will be sodomised. If you’re a lady, you’ll be forced into lesbianism. There was a time I was imprisoned, and several men wanted to sodomise me. I knelt and prayed to God. I told Him, that if He rescues me from the forthcoming ordeal and take me out of the prison, I would serve Him for the rest of my life. God heard my prayer and answered me. I left prison and became a changed person.”
Ajitemisan, who used the opportunity to urge parents, never to curse their children, said that parents and guardians should make their children to trust and confide in them. He said that if such a relationship is built, the parents would be the child’s first point of call in times of trouble.
His words: “Among my mother’s three children, I was the person she said was bad luck. What kind of crime had I not committed? I didn’t want to be a rascal, but I wanted live my wife according to my mother’s curse. I wanted to be the bad luck. If my mother had showed me love, I wouldn’t have been a bad boy.”
The pastor, who urged the students to listen to every discussions and suggestions on how to make it in life and avoid crime, said that the students were lucky to have people speaking directly to them. He noted that during his life, nobody spoke to him about crime and his wayward life.
Speaking further on drugs and cultism, the GO said that although he was not into taking drugs, but he had studied enough about them, thus knew it was dangerous and easily influenced youths to crime. He also told them most cultists and Boko Haram members operated under influence of drugs.
First Published 2017
