The University Don Who Teaches In The Redemption Camp

Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye is a Nigerian Pastor and the General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).

Pastor Adeboye has a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Lagos and worked as a lecturer in mathematics at the Universities of Lagos and Ilorin. After joining the RCCG, he began working to translate the sermons of its then Pastor and founder, Rev. Josiah Olufemi Akindayomi, from Yoruba into English.

BACKGROUND

In 1981 Adeboye was appointed General Overseer of the church, taking over from Papa Akindayomi, who had died the previous year. For three years he filled the role part-time, still lecturing at Ilorin, until giving up his university position to preach full-time.

The church, which was not well known before Adeboye took charge, now claims branches in over a hundred countries, including more than 14,000 in Nigeria. Adeboye has stated that his aim is to put a church within five minutes of every person on Earth.

In 2008, Newsweek magazine named Adeboye one of the fifty most powerful people in the world. He is married to Foluke Adeboye, also a pastor, and together they have for children, Adeolu Adeboye – Son; Leke Adeboye – Son; Dare Adeboye – Son; Bolu Adubi – Daughter.

Pastor E.A. Adeboye was born on 2nd March 1942 at Ifewara in present-day Osun State. His parents (now of blessed memory) were indigenes of the town, which is about midway between Ilesha and Ondo towns.

He had a strict Christian upbringing which was engineered by a church-going culture, which was the prevalent style of Christianity of those days. This church-going attitude gave him an appreciation of God, but made no extraordinary or outstanding Christian out of him.

He underwent primary and secondary education which were almost curtailed due to the problem of funds, barefooted and in tears. He recalls, “For the first seventeen years of my life, I never had to wear shoes”.

However, as God would have it, he survived against all odds to graduate from the University in 1967, at the age of 25. Between 1967 and 1975 he added two more degrees, an M.Sc. in hydrodynamics and a PhD in Applied Mathematics and lectured at the University of Lagos and the University of Ilorin. Before his lectureship at these Universities, the G.O. had taught mathematics at two secondary schools viz: Okeigbo Grammar School, Okeigbo near Ondo and the Lagos Anglican Girls Grammar School, Surulere/Lagos.

It would appear that his academic and professional career and achievement greatly prepared him for the office into which God was to call him later on.

His childhood Christian background had made him to appreciate God in the ordinary sense. However, it was not strict enough to preclude him from being an active young man engaging in all the perks to which a young lecturer and an educated man was “entitled”, even though he was married.

Married in 1968 to his wife, Pastor (Mrs.) Foluke Adeboye, the young couple was faced with the problem of recurrent caesarian section by which the wife had delivered their first two babies. Medical science had diagnosed that in view of the formation of pelvic bones, having babies by natural means was impossible and such advised against having further children. A solution had to be found.

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