ISAAC OMOLEHIN & THE BANDITS

By Akin Ojumu

There is something deeply indecent about kicking a man when he is already down. To attack a person precisely at the moment when he is frightened, displaced, vulnerable, and suffering is not courage. It is cruelty. It betrays a poverty of character.

So, let me make something clear from the outset.

This commentary is not an exercise in schadenfreude. It is not an attempt to derive pleasure from another man’s suffering. It is not a dance upon anyone’s metaphorical grave.

What happened to Mr. Isaac Omolehin and his family is horrifying.

But his ordeal also raises an unavoidable question—one made unavoidable by the extraordinary claims Mr. Omolehin himself has made over the years about his spiritual power, supernatural anointing, and spectacular demonstrations of the miraculous.

According to reports circulating across social media and traditional news outlets, bandit activity forced Mr. Isaac Omolehin and his family to abandon his ministry camp in Kwara State, Nigeria.

Omolehin, founder of Word Assembly Ministries, reportedly disclosed that threats linked to armed bandits forced him, his wife, and his children from their home and into hiding.

He said he has been unable to return either to his residence or to the ministry camp in Idofin, Ifelodun Local Government Area of Kwara State after security operatives warned of an impending attack.

In his own words:

“I have a house I can’t enter. I have a car I can’t ride. I have to hide myself from the public. If I sleep here today, I’ll sleep somewhere else tomorrow. I’m homeless with my wife and children.”

According to Omolehin, the crisis began on May 31, 2026, when police officers arrived at the camp in the early hours and ordered everyone to evacuate because intelligence suggested that bandits were preparing to attack.

More than one hundred people reportedly fled the facility. 

The ministry complex housed an orphanage, schools, a hospital, an old people’s home, and a rehabilitation center.

Omolehin lamented:

“The school cannot open, the hospital is not functioning, and the patients and nurses all ran for their lives.”

The bandits, he said, later arrived.

“They came, the bandits, but they didn’t meet anybody.”

Since then, according to Omolehin, he and his family have been moving from place to place because authorities have not assured them that it is safe to return.

As though that were not enough, he said his hometown in Kogi State was attacked only three days later.

“Three days after the attack on my camp here in Kwara, my village in Kogi State was also attacked, and my people were killed.”

He further explained that although the bandits did not destroy the camp buildings, thieves later entered the abandoned facility and carted away property.

“The kidnappers did not come to steal refrigerators, fans or mattresses. They came for human beings.”

He also raised the heartbreaking plight of children in the orphanage:

“Some of the children in the orphanage were brought to us by the government. Even if they say they don’t care about the rest of us, what about the children they entrusted to us?”

On this point, there should be no mockery. As a human being, I feel for Isaac Omolehin. His ordeal is heartbreaking.

That human beings can terrorize other human beings to the point where a man, his wife, his children, orphaned children, hospital patients, nurses, elderly people, and entire communities must abandon their homes and institutions beggars belief.

This should never have happened. It should never happen to anybody. And it cannot be allowed to become normal.

A man ought to be able to sleep safely beneath his own roof. A citizen should not have to hide from terrorists in his own country. Children should not have to flee orphanages. Patients should not have to abandon hospitals. Farmers should not be afraid to go to their farms. Families should not have to wonder whether armed men will descend upon their communities in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, Isaac Omolehin’s experience is no longer exceptional in Nigeria. For millions of Nigerians, insecurity has become a grim fact of everyday life. People are unsafe in their homes. Unsafe on the highways. Unsafe on their farms. Unsafe in their villages. Unsafe even in places supposedly dedicated to worship, education, and healing.

And while ordinary Nigerians live under this cloud of terror, many of those charged with securing the nation remain insulated behind armed convoys, fortified residences, security details, and walls high enough to keep reality outside.

So yes, I sympathize with Mr. Isaac Omolehin. 

Completely. 

But sympathy does not require the suspension of reason. And having acknowledged the tragedy of his situation, I would be remiss if I failed to ask the glaringly obvious question:

Whatever happened to the anointing? Whatever happened to the supernatural power? Whatever happened to the extraordinary spiritual demonstrations?

Because Isaac Omolehin is not merely an ordinary pastor who has spent his ministry quietly preaching Christ and serving his congregation. He has presented himself as a man acquainted with extraordinary manifestations of supernatural power.

Indeed, according to one of his own stories, the power operating through his ministry was once so overwhelming that chairs carrying human beings allegedly lifted themselves into the air.

Yes. Chairs. With people still sitting on them.

According to Omolehin, this happened during a meeting in Egbe in 1984.

He tells the story this way:

“In 1984, I was doing a meeting in Egbe. Charles Achonwa was supposed to take the meeting, but he left the meeting and he told me to hold it because he was going to Bauchi. And while I was praying after preaching, the people who were sitting on the front seats, the chairs carried them into the air, and the chairs came to the altar, poured them down, and the chairs turned to arrange themselves back to where they sat. In 1984. Nobody in that meeting could stand. Those days we were not talking of crowds, we were talking of demonstration…”

Read that carefully.

The chairs allegedly lifted into the air. The chairs allegedly transported the people sitting on them to the altar. The chairs allegedly tipped the occupants onto the altar. Then, apparently having completed their supernatural assignment, the chairs allegedly turned around and returned to their original positions.

No ushers required. No stagehands necessary. No furniture movers on duty. The chairs themselves had apparently joined the ministry.

And that is not all.

Omolehin has also described meetings in which the manifestation of spiritual power was supposedly so intense that a dead body could simply be thrown into the atmosphere and would come back to life—even without anybody praying.

Think about the magnitude of that claim. We are not talking about somebody claiming that God sovereignly answered prayer. We are talking about an alleged spiritual atmosphere so saturated with power that death itself supposedly could not survive entry into the building.

And this is where the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.

If a man possesses—or ministers under—such stupendous supernatural power, how does he become homeless because armed bandits threaten his camp?

How does the man whose prayers allegedly sent occupied chairs flying through the air find himself moving from one hiding place to another because mortal men carrying rifles are chasing him?

How does someone who claims to have generated an atmosphere capable of resurrecting corpses without prayer become unable to enter his own house because bandits may be waiting nearby?

These are not cruel questions. They are reasonable questions. They arise naturally from the claims themselves.

If you spend decades telling people that extraordinary supernatural power follows your ministry, you cannot complain when people examine those claims against the realities of your own life.

You cannot advertise supernatural invincibility in the testimony service and then demand that nobody ask questions when ordinary human danger sends you fleeing.

To be perfectly clear, fleeing from armed bandits is not cowardice. It is common sense.

If armed terrorists are coming, run. Take your wife. Take your children. Protect the vulnerable. Call the police. Seek shelter. Do whatever prudence requires. That is what we mere mortals do when confronted by armed criminals.

And therein lies the point.

Isaac Omolehin reacted exactly as a mere mortal would react. Because he is a mere mortal like everyone else.

The difficulty is that for years men like him have cultivated an aura suggesting that they occupy some higher supernatural plane—that they carry unusual deposits of divine power, inhabit atmospheres of staggering anointing, and preside over manifestations that suspend the normal order of creation.

Then reality arrives carrying an AK-47. And suddenly the language changes.

The chairs no longer fly. The supernatural atmosphere does not immobilize the attackers. The alleged resurrection power does not terrify the bandits. Nobody commands weapons to fall from their hands. Nobody releases an apostolic force field around the camp.

Everybody evacuates. Everybody runs. Everybody hides. Exactly as ordinary frightened human beings do.

And that should tell us something.

The issue here is not that Isaac Omolehin fled. He was right to flee. The issue is the vast gulf between the spectacular stories and the ordinary reality.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is also the most obvious:

The stories were never evidence of supernatural power in the first place. They were stories. Tall tales. Religious folklore. Unverifiable testimonies told in environments where skepticism is treated as unbelief and extravagant claims are applauded as demonstrations of faith.

I cannot independently peer into Isaac Omolehin’s heart and pronounce upon his motives. But I can say this. Claims as extraordinary as flying chairs and resurrection-saturated atmospheres demand extraordinary evidence.

And Christians, of all people, should not be trained to switch off their minds simply because the person telling the story carries a Bible. The Bereans were called noble because they examined what they were being taught.

Christian faith is not credulity. Discernment is not unbelief. And asking for evidence is not rebellion against God.

This tragic episode should therefore become a learning moment—not merely about insecurity in Nigeria, but about the culture of spiritual celebrity that thrives on extravagant, unverifiable supernatural claims.

Stop surrendering your critical faculties to men because they tell astonishing stories. Stop confusing theatrical testimony with apostolic authority. Stop assuming that every preacher who announces that he “carries power” actually possesses some private deposit of divine electricity unavailable to ordinary Christians. 

And above all, stop treating ministers of the Gospel as spiritual supermen.

Isaac Omolehin deserves compassion in his suffering. His family deserves safety. The children in that orphanage deserve protection. The patients deserve their hospital back. The community deserves security. The Nigerian government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from terrorists and bandits.

But none of that requires us to pretend that the contradiction is not there.

A man who tells the world that his prayers once sent chairs airborne with people still sitting on them should expect someone, eventually, to ask the obvious question when armed men send him running from his own home:

Sir, whatever happened to all that power?