The Most Revd. Barr. Christopher Edeh is the Archbishop of Enugu Diocese, Methodist Church, Nigeria. In this exclusive interview with PACESETTER, the revered man of God spoke on various issues, from his journey through priesthood, to happenings in the political space. Dateline: April 1, 2025.
How did the journey to becoming a Methodist priest and then an Archbishop start?
It’s a long story, I have been in this ministry for the past 44 years. I had my call at a very tender age of sixteen. Due to the nature of the family I was born into, a very poor family, I didn’t have the luxury of a secondary school education and because of that, I was taken to Western Nigeria, Ile Ife particularly, as an apprentice. I got to work with one lecturer at the University of Ife, Professor Fagbaun, as his house boy. The man said to me, “You look intelligent so, why are you not going to school?” I told him my parents had no money and he suggested I stay with them, work in the day and join extra mural classes in the evening. I attended the extra mural classes for two years and then took my exams, passing with five credits including Igbo language in Yoruba land and without a teacher. After that, I came back home to my parents. I was in church one day and the preacher came, one Rev. H. J. E Ironsi was preaching, I felt my heart warm, I felt I could serve God. After the service, I went to him and I told him I wanted to serve God in ministry. He was so happy and took me to my parents, my father was very angry but my mother was happy, reason being that she had promised God that if my brother and I survived, one of us will serve him. I have a twin brother and we were born at a time when twins were still killed in my community. God saved us by miraculously taking us out of our community and by the time we returned, we were already four years old at the time and there was no way people in the community could still kill boys who were four years old. So, when that man preached and I said I wanted to serve God, my mother said “Yes, I promised God that one of them was going to serve him and God has by himself picked somebody to serve him, he must serve God”, but my father strongly objected.
While my parents were still at loggerheads over my decision, one day while we were praying early in the morning, we heard a knock on the door. We finished praying and opened the door to see a leper sitting by the door. Then, leprosy was seen as infectious and no one wants to come close to a leper. My father angrily asked what she was doing in his house. She explained that she was leper from Presbyterian Joint Hospital, Uburu and that she had just been discharged and lived by begging. She further added that God told her to come to the village and He will show her a place where He has called one boy who will be His minister and that she must bring every coin she got from begging and give to him for him to go to school. My father refused, saying that God can’t confirm the call of his son through a leper. Crying, the woman got to the center of our compound, drew a circle, opened her wrapper and brought out fourteen one naira coins and dropped it at the center of the circle and said “God I leave this dust of my feet, I leave this money, I have done what you asked me to do, please allow me to sleep when I get home”, adding that for the past two weeks she hadn’t been able to sleep due to the pressure from God. When my parents went to farm, I stubbornly took the money, rushed to MTI (Methodist Theological Institute) and took exams into the ministry, passed my exams and that was how I came into ministry at the age of sixteen. At nineteen, I was already a Reverend, I was so young that mothers in church called me “Reverend Nwa’m”.
Before I could finish from MTI, the woman had died. She had no brother, no sister, no son, and no daughter, nobody that I could link to help for the sake of what she did for me. Her name is Mary Mbagu and I have registered an NGO in her name, I didn’t want to call it “Archbishop Edeh Foundation”, I called it “Mary Mbagu Foundation”. I was kept strong by the testament of that woman and what God showed me.
What kind of a religious leader will you want to be remembered as?
Well, I can tell you God has shown me mercy already. One of the things this church is remembering me for is that I have been a model and mentor to so many about what ministry should be. Ministry these days, young people are after money, but I have taught them and I keep teaching them. I want to be remembered as a leader who taught them that being a minister of God is beyond what you get or what is given to you, the cars you drive and whatever that comes with pastoring. I also want to be remembered for my passion for the poor because when I become Bishop of Uzuakoli, Uzuakoli has Methodist leprosy center, I left the Bishop’s house and went to live among the lepers. I lived with them for nine years and became Chairman of the Uzuakoli Leper colony. Within that period I ensured children of the leper got scholarships, we relocated their parents back to their villages and built two bedrooms for them and they were able to reintegrate themselves within the community. This foundation we just opened is to ensure that we help the poor, needy, disabled, ministers like me who have genuine cause and have children but no money to train them or even ministers that are genuine but because of the ministry, they have lost focus because of difficulties. I also want to be remembered as one of the greatest evangelists that lived.
Let’s step away a bit from your theological journey. Should religious leaders be involved in politics?
I believe that the church should be involved in politics, it is as straight as that. The church made a mistake of abandoning politics to the world and these are terrible people. Touts take over our destinies, uneducated fellows, keke (tricycle) riders and cultists. They take over your destiny and you sit back in church to pray? What do you expect? And that’s the bane of our country today. When the righteous rule, the people rejoice, when the wicked rule, the people gnash their teeth. The gnashing of teeth we have today is because Christians allowed politics into the hands of evil men and right now the evil people are fighting back, they are not allowing the believers to come in. There was a governor I was talking with about how he should allow righteousness to be part of the foundation for politics and he said to me, “Bishop when it comes to church take that one, now as for this politics, leave it for us”. Which means basically they know that they aren’t leading with righteousness. So, I believe the church should go into politics. Although going into it not as partisan politics, the church cannot be PDP or APC.
(Cuts in) I was going to ask you that. How can religious leaders offer moral guidance on political issues without being perceived as partisan?
The members of the church can be partisan, you can’t do politics without belonging to a party. But as a religious leader, I can’t be in any party, you are my member, you are PDP, he’s my member he’s APC. Religious leaders must first be proactive, we have leaders, for instance we are have a Bureau for Good Governance in this office (referring to his office) where we talk with all the church members going into politics to please go and we pray for them. Now, I do not tell them “go and join APC or go and join PDP”, wherever you are, from your ward, be an active participant in politics. If it’s time to contest, go and vote and be voted for. The church is encouraging people in that realm but not in a realm of partisanship but if there’s anybody whose pedigree or integrity is good and whereas we know he will do well, we pray for him and ask God to help him to win, those who are terrible, we know them all and we turn our backs on them.
Juxtaposing the template you have just set on offering guidance with the recent happenings in Nigeria, do you assume that religious leaders of your class have spoken up?
They (referring to the politicians) are simply distracting the masses who are suffering. We are now busy talking about Natasha. A woman held the hand of a man and they went into his bedroom with the husband following and the Senate president said to her “when we come back here, we will have a good time”. Your husband was behind you and you didn’t say “Darling did you hear what your friend said to me?”, it’s now that we are hungry that you should give us food to eat, give us good roads, good governance that you are now talking about your friendship with a man. They are distracting us. Look, politicians are terrible, they want a way to bypass the attention of the masses because if not, how can a senator be talking about sexual harassment? Does she understand the level at which she is operating? So, we are speaking up, read the newspapers, read the tabloids, I speak up constantly. It’s our duty to speak for the masses like I personally do.
What advice will you give to a young Christian considering building his career in politics?
In politics, there’s what we call political jobbing. Political jobbing is, if I bring you tomorrow and say Peter Mbah should make you a local government chairman. You don’t have a party card, you don’t even know the name of your ward and the number of your ward, it’s impossible. You know why? Political jobbing proposed that you should start from the scratch, learn the trade; vote, follow, go for meetings. Everything has its own trick, but some people just want to come and ask that I take them to the governor for a position, when you know you have never been part of the system. I will say to the person go and start from the scratch, learn the trade and you will make a great politician.
Let us in on your assessment of the current leadership in all the states of the Southeast?
If you ask me, I think Southeast states are blessed with good governors. Starting from Enugu State here, we can see what Peter Mbah is doing, he doesn’t talk, his work is speaking for him. Some may be crying over taxation but we see what he’s doing with the money. See what’s happening at conference center, our street roads, presidential hotel that has been abandoned over the years, the dualisation that’s ongoing to join Ebonyi State, the road going from Amagunze, it’s just massive work going on, see also the smart schools everywhere. Obviously, Peter Mbah is doing well.
The man in Abia, Alex Otti, is also doing very well. He came and changed many things in Abia. People now say, “Aaah, so this kind of money is in Abia” because he started doing awesome things.
The man in Owerri, Hope Uzodinma, despite the way people are complaining about his closeness with the federal government but I think he’s using it well, because all his projects in Imo are receiving attention. Whether it’s by federal government assistance, I don’t know but he’s doing well. The problem I had with Imo was the insecurity issue which stemmed from the Anambra-Imo axis, Anambra was now used as the forest. That axis from Ihiala down to Orlu were seized by these terrible boys. But can’t you see there’s now peace in Anambra State? The governor, Chukwuma Soludo has taken charge of security. I think all of them are doing well, I don’t want to grade them.
I am from Ebonyi State, we call Governor Nwifuru, the builder. He’s doing very well. The good thing about Ebonyi is that it has been blessed with good governors from Sam Egwu down to Martin Elechi, Dave Umahi and now Gov. Nwifuru, all of them are very good.
Sam Egwu was educated, he was a lecturer before he became the governor. He laid so much emphasis on human development. Elechi was a core civil servant, you need to go and see the secretariat of Ebonyi State, I think it’s the biggest in the entire Southeast. Then Mr. Project came – Umahi. Umahi is an Engineer, there’s no community in Ebonyi that is not connected with roads, concrete roads. You can actually close your eyes and drive through Ebonyi State. Now this man came, Nwifuru who was actually a Speaker when Umahi was governor and he learnt the ropes. I think they are doing very well. The East is now blessed, what they need to do is to close ranks and merge together, for instance, creating a rail line that connects the entire Southeast.
How would you respond to the ban on street evangelism in Anambra?
I have not heard that Soludo banned street evangelism. The day that Soludo spoke to us, he never talked about street evangelism. Soludo, actually started this war, fighting people who deceptively ruin the lives of our children by telling them that they have imaginary powers that can protect them and that by using these powers they can disappear and appear, they can call people’s money and it comes into their pocket. Things we know obviously are fetish and then in order to make them feel at home there’s something that’s mystic about it, they begin to ask them to bring small children and some parts of human body for sacrifice and they say they are doing tradition. What tradition of Igbo land permits kidnapping? Because when they do these things and don’t get the money, they now kidnap people to be able to raise money to pay the Dibia. They know that these things they are doing is all falsehood. So, they are traditional things our people were doing in the past that are not that fetish. Number one – what’s tradition? If you do something many times it becomes a tradition. So, any tradition that will bring loss of lives, loss of properties, or laziness and lack of work among our children, that tradition is not a good tradition. Igbos believe in working hard, we believe in working together to be able to survive. We don’t sit back, take a laptop and press it to take people’s money, that’s not Igbo blood. What we are fighting now is for complete adoration.