Nigeria is engaged in serious wars; new wars are not necessary – Adeboye

Adeboye’s remark came in response to the debate around the ECOWAS’s plan to send soldiers to the Niger Republic while it is chaired by Bola Tinubu, the president of Nigeria.

Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), claims that Nigeria already has several significant wars going and doesn’t need any more.

“We are still engaged in major conflicts against hunger, and we definitely do not want further wars. When speaking early on Saturday before the church’s 2023 Convention, which had the subject “Beyond Expectations,” the revered clergyman remarked, “We want to win the ones we are fighting and we don’t want fresh ones; whether within or outside of our borders.”

Going down historical memory lane, the 81-year-old preacher claimed to have seen the Nigerian Civil War, which lasted from July 1967 to January 1970 and involved the Nigerian and Biafran sides.

After having been through a war, he declared that he would always prefer peace over conflict.

Nigeria still requires a lot of prayers, according to Adeboye. Although I was only a young child, I was there at the battlefront during the Civil violence. I wasn’t a soldier, but I did live close to it, and after what I saw, I would choose peace over violence if given the choice.

The speaker claimed that Nigeria previously fought numerous wars against kidnappers, terrorists, and killer herdsmen, among other enemies, and that the nation did not need to fight any more wars but rather to triumph in the ones it was already engaged in.

“And we are already engaged in a number of operations in Nigeria, including wars against terrorists and kidnappers. In some parts of Nigeria, people still worry about being murdered before the next morning when they go to bed.

He claimed that some people still believed that if you were a farmer and cultivated something, your crop served as nourishment for their cows, and if you objected when their cows started eating your harvest, they would kill you.

Adeboye’s remark came in response to the controversy surrounding the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) under the chairmanship of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s proposed deployment of military to the Niger Republic.

On July 26, 2023, President Mohamed Bazoum’s legally elected administration in the adjacent Niger Republic was overthrown by the military.

The ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), a multilateral armed force made up of the 15 member states, was then given a deadline of last Sunday by the troops who had seized power to restore the 63-year-old Bazoum or face the potential use of force.

In the midst of a wave of economic measures, such as the closing of the border, Nigeria also shut off energy to Nigeria, but the coup leaders resisted, and the deadline passed without any action.