There I was on holiday enjoying the unexpected Naijaesque breakfast of boiled yam and orishirishi when my friend asked if I’d heard of a certain “Prophet” Jeremiah who put out a video where he asked God for the Key of Heaven, and God spoke like He would in a bad Nollywood movie (complete with sound effects) and rained down keys on Jeremiah. I spat out my breakfast because of all the ridiculous things I’ve heard about religious frauds, this was the most ridiculous. I thought that surely this was a movie clip that had been misidentified. My friend swore that it was not, and pulled up the video on her phone for me to see. People, as acting goes, Senior Prophet Jeremiah Omoto Fufeyin of Christ Mercy Land Deliverance Ministry, is a poor actor/screenwriter.
If the video is news to you, this is the gist of it: this dude, a whole, grown man, goes to the ‘mountain,’ which really is a cordoned-off open space, perhaps a park, surrounded by trees, (with a video crew obviously) to pray. In a loud voice, he tells God that it is ‘time to set your children free.” He asks that he be given the master key/keys of the kingdom, the key/keys of David from heaven. He’s not sure if there’s one key or multiple ones because he keeps using the singular and the plural interchangeably.
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The key or keys should be handed to him so that he can release those in bondage, some of whose businesses and marriages and destinies “have been locked down…in oceans and covens…in different altars of darkness” preventing them from succeeding. Success, for Jeremiah also includes going abroad. He rolls carefully on the floor a few times and asks for grace. After a short while, a thunderstorm worthy of a low-budget Nollywood movie occurs and gold-plated keys that I am certain this charlatan bought in bulk from a Dollar General appear (from heaven).
Our man then asks people who want success in personal and professional lives, including his fellow pastors whose ministries are failing, to come for their own master key. In addition to the key, he tells us that he also has master key t-shirts like the one he’s wearing which people hard on their luck should get because in the Book of Zachariah, Joshua was ordered to remove his filthy garment and be clothed in clean clothes. Apparently, the key works in tandem with branded apparel. Come, Prophet Jeremiah says, and he will tell you how to use the key to unlock your life.
But nothing is free. This self-proclaimed prophet might have gotten his keys from “heaven” in answer to his prayers, but everyone else needs to pay for them. A few days after the video, it was revealed that he was offering the keys for N100,000 each to his congregation. It is safe to assume that the t-shirt isn’t free either.
What manner of wickedness, what insatiable greed would lead one to sell rubbish for N100,000 to gullible people for whom the money might not be easy to come by, especially when that person, the seller has clearly benefited from his ministry? Prophet Jeremiah has money, some have said he is a billionaire even. When is the money enough? How can he sell keys, with a straight face to the congregation before whom he’s displayed his wealth? In 2017, he was in the news for gifting his wife with a cheque of N30 million for her birthday during a church service. In 2020, during the dedication service of their infant son, Greatness, he announced the gift of a brand-new Lexus jeep LX570, allegedly worth N75 million to the same wife. Okay oo. How does this Senior Prophet Jeremiah go to bed at night? How does he sleep? Tufia!
It is difficult to believe that there are folks who willingly give this grifter their money, who believe him, who refer to him as a pastor or prophet without any sense of irony.
I guess faith is a personal journey and one can never really walk in another’s shoes. There are people, after all, even those close to me, for whom my belief in God is as much hocus pocus as Jeremiah’s keys are to me. So, I am really trying hard not to blame the victims of his scam. I blame the man himself and people like him who exploit the faith of their congregation. I abhor these men/women- of -God whose missions begin and end in how much they can fill their deep pockets.
I’d say this man should find his conscience and leave churching alone. I’d say he should put his imagination (and his wealth) to better use, but I fear that a man who could easily write a N30 million cheque and yet milk his congregation for some more money, especially in Naija’s present economy may be too far gone to hear the voice of his conscience.