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Bianca Iboma-Emefu
The founder of an interdenominational outreach, International Church Growth Ministries, Dr. Bola Akin-John has called for the use of thorough enlightenment and sustainable campaigns to tackle all forms of sexual molestation, especially in the church.
This is coming as he observed that sexual abuse has become a recurring phenomenon in the house of God across the country.
He said there was the need for everyone in the church to be equipped with sufficient knowledge to arrest the ugly trend so that the society would be better for it.
He lamented that many religious teachers, whom the people looked up to, have been caught molesting and raping children right in the church and other places.
To reverse the incidence, he charged the church authorities to embark on programmes and well-researched sermons that would be intermittently preached to the congregation. He said that experts should be invited to churches to sensitise everyone to the tricks the perpetrators adopt to lure their targets to illicit sexual intercourse.
“When they are caught they immediately shift the blames to the devil. The church has failed in the area of producing purified leadership, so it needs to return to the moral values and holiness that true Christians are known for.
“Christian leaders in the older generation preached and lived holy lives, while the present generation churches focus more on prosperity and miracles without paying attention to the message of sanctification. This is one of the reasons we experience sexual recklessness.
“It is sad that the leadership in most churches has polluted the church with sexual pervasion, corruption and other fraudulent acts.
“Christians in Nigerian must return to God in uprightness like the church of old. They must preach against sexual abuse in their pulpit. While we shy to preach it, it has bedevilled the church. It is time the church addressed this issue.
“The sensitisation could be in form of workshops, seminars conferences, interactive sessions that can deal with sexual immorality trending in the church,” Akin-John said.
He raised the alarm that there were female ministers, widows, single parents, pastors’ wives and other categories of women who lure ministers of the gospel into sexual immorality.
The man of God recalled an experience of how he saw a beautiful, married lady with three kids and a good job go to her pastor to complain of loneliness and emotional dryness.
“Since her husband travelled abroad two years earlier, she became sex-starved. The pastor became sympathetic with her persistence and before you know it, she planted a kiss on the pastor’s cheek, asking him to help her release her body urge. She said she couldn’t find younger men to help her. Before the pastor could realise it, what he never bargained for happened. Thank God he was quick to confess the act and sought spiritual advice,” he said.
Akin- John stressed that In the 1960s, 1970s and part of the early 1980s, Nigerians didn’t hear much about sex scandals, financial misappropriations and other corrupt practices in the church.
“But as soon as every Tom, Dick and Harry turned themselves to pastors and general overseers, a lot of things have started to happen. Children and women have been the major victims,” he lamented.
He noted that six out of every 10 Nigerian children experience some forms of physical, emotional and sexual violence before they turn 18.
Akin-John said one in two children experiences physical violence; one in four girls and one in ten boys experience sexual violence. One in six girls and one in five boys experience emotional violence.
He revealed that only less than five per cent of children who experience violence receive support.
He suggested the need for the church to tighten security around minors against paedophiles who come as wolves in sheep’s clothing to worship centres. He urged everyone to take up the responsibility and collaborate to end sexual pervasion in the church.
He also urged churches to write books on child sexual exploitation in Nigeria’s major languages and set up therapy centres managed by experts, saying it might help in changing the narrative.
