Wherever you are, please, lift your hands and pray for the ‘billionaire kidnapper,’ “Evans” Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, the man whose Igbo n...
Wherever you are, please, lift your hands and pray for the ‘billionaire kidnapper,’ “Evans” Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, the man whose Igbo native names roughly translate as “God-leads-me-in-whatever-I-do” (for Chukwudumeme), “Death-is-no respecter-of-a-warrior/great man” (Onwuamadike).
He needs prayer, a lot of it, following his formal arraignment along his gang members, in court, this week, on multiple charges of murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition filed against him by the Force Legal Department and Lagos State Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) before the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja; with subsequent ones coming up at the Federal High Court and Edo State High Court, Benin.
While the arraignment, on Wednesday, centred on his abduction of Mr. Donatus Dunu from whom he and his gang members collected N150 million before he escaped from their custody, 13 other substantive cases, nine in Lagos, and four in Edo, carrying 52 charges in all, are set to be brought against him and his gang, with time. You can see why he badly needs prayers. So? Could you, kindly close your eyes and pray for him!
Time to beg victims
While you are at it, Evans says he is ready, God helping him out of this one, not only to repent but also to do the necessary penance. He will apologise to his victims if he meets them in court, he promises in an exclusive interview with Saturday Sun. “I will,” he swears. “I have been begging them. When they came to interview me, I knelt down and begged them. I am still begging them to forgive me.”
So? In your prayers, ask God to touch his victims to forgive him. Yes, as he forgave those who called him a billionaire. “I am not a billionaire,” he responded when you asked whether he is truly a billionaire like news headlines and reports are trying to present him. “It’s just because of the kind of money I collected from the victims, that is why they decided to refer to me as a billionaire.”
Evans a pastor?
And, please, let somebody shout Hallelujah fourteen times. Asked if given a chance, he would like to become a pastor, he answers that he is already one. He regrets his action and tries to emphasise that point over and over in this interview with him and he promises to be a changed person. Even before this time, he was not really as bad as people are trying to paint him. None of his victims was tortured nor killed in the process, he pointed out.
“The only time that someone died (during his operations) was during the attempted kidnap of the chairman of The Young Shall Grow Motors,” he swears. “During that operation, we were attacked and there was exchange of gunshots. They shot at us and my gang members shot back at them. It was in the morning that I heard that one inspector and the driver who drove the Young Shall Grow chairman died. It was an unfortunate incident. I have totally regretted everything about crime. It does not pay. I keep telling people to learn from my story. Crime does not pay. Everything I acquired all these years are gone just in a day. I will be an agent of change in prison.”
Oh boy! “I already have a covenant with God. If police take me to court, I told God that I will not tell lies against the police or victims. I promise to tell the court the truth about any crime that I am guilty of. Please, people of Nigeria should forgive me.”
Ready to pay for his sins
With 14 cases, 52 charges or whatever hanging on his neck, he is ready to plead guilty to them all if doing so will help get him off the hook, he assures you. “Yes, I will,” he says, looking directly into your eyes. “I want to do so because I don’t want those lawyers to be deceiving me. I don’t want them to mislead me.” Asked about the lawyer defending him on the case, he said: “I don’t know how he came about the matter.” May God take power from the devil, you almost found yourself saying like Mama Joe, a character in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, Purple Hibiscus, is wont to say. So he is not going to accept the lawyer’s help if he meets him in court? He curtly replies no before adding that he is hoping to get a lighter sentence.
This is to believe that you are still praying for Evans! Please, what point are you in your prayers for him? What exactly are you asking God to do for him? “I just believe in God for a miracle,” he tells you. “I will serve God all my life. I also promised the police that I will help them to fight crime.”
If I die, I die
In addition, he is asking forgiveness from his victims. “I will continue to beg them to forgive me even if they attempt to kill me and If I have to die, then I die”, he says. You guess he has not seen his wife and kids since he was arrested, you told him. What message would he want you to give to them? “I want you to tell them that I am still alive and healthy. They should simply pray for me that the court will not sentence me to death.”
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