Enenche and Damina Debacle: In search of a truce

I had thought I would have no reason to write again on Dr Abel Damina, the Pentecostal rave currently holding the Church by the jugular. The first article I wrote on him was titled, The Church, Abel Damina and his Frankenstein monsters” four years ago; I had wondered at some of his strange teachings and concluded that it was a wave of the moment that would soon fizzle. But that is not the case yet. Rather, his popularity has soared compared to four years ago.

So, when the recent drama stirred by some of his controversial teachings began, I simply coiled and watched.

But when the altercation between him and Pastor Paul Enenche; another strong-willed Pentecostal sensation in Abuja began, I shuddered and began to wonder where this would lead the Pentecostal wing of the Church. Initially, it seemed like a child’s play; that would wrap up in no time. But the schism the feud is causing among believers is getting wider by the day.

There is the Damina Camp and then the Enenche Camp. Both camps are unyielding. Social media is daily being flooded with posts on the duo with people taking sides.

Enenche bared his fangs

The height of it was a recent message by Enenche where he bared his fangs and almost literally sulked Damina.  Though he did not mention his name in the message, it was clear that he was referring to Damina when he said “his 8000 congregation has reduced to 250 because he kept preaching people away from his church.”

Enenche then began gloating about the huge crowd that attends his own Dunamis Gospel Centre and making the inference that wherever the gospel is preached there is always a crowd. He talked about Jesus attracting crowds everywhere he went during his lifetime. But he forgot to tell his audience that despite all the miracles and crowds that Jesus attracted only about 120 were in the upper room after his ascension.

The crowd disappeared into thin air when he was being arraigned to be crucified. So, it came as a shock that Enenche would codedly raise his shoulders and take pride in the mass of people who attend his church. Using the crowd as a parameter to judge his achievement was a misplaced emotional outburst.

Damina induced anger

It was clear his anger was directed at Damina. Rather than address some of the issues Damina raised in his messages and educate his congregation on why some of his teachings are not healthy by his standard, he went for Damina’s underpants. He made innuendos about Damina and his gangs confessing that his association with them in the past was an error.

Truth be told, Damina had a horrible past on the pulpit. He too admitted that he was the “Baba” of Prosperity message. He took that gospel to the extreme boasting that he could raise money from Satan himself when he was sold to that gospel.

Ordinarily, his decision to dump the transactional gospel should have been a cheering news to the church community. But it is not. The reason this is so is that, apart from dumping the transactional gospel, he attracted other strange doctrines that put to question to age-long tradition in the Body of Christ; to the point of saying, “children don’t come from God.”

If a man is bold to say children don’t come from God, it is as good as saying, God did not create man. Damina has the style of getting the attention of his listeners with eye and ear-catching statements as it is done in journalism and now goes through the ordeal of explaining himself.

He claimed that some of his teachings run for 72 hours. One would probably wonder why a sermon has to take that long for it to be understood. The average churchgoer does not have patience for long sermons. If an exegesis cannot be sorted out in a 30-minute message, the preacher is likely digging a hole where it will be useless.

From one extreme to another

The irony about Damina is that he left one extreme of faith to enter another extreme, this time making it difficult to attract the sympathy of those who should naturally sympathise with him.

Before he began the anti-prosperity message, there were a thousand and one preachers who hated the prosperity gospel. There are teachers of the Word who don’t even collect offerings in their meetings. Many are anti-tithe. But they do not make a drama out of their beliefs. What Damina has brought to the table is drama and attention. And he has been able to rouse people to begin to pay attention to the excesses of some church leaders especially those who fleece their congregations of their hard-earned money with faith extenders.

This has made him an instant social media celebrity. This is good in the sense that many have woken up. We should not take that laurel from him. A sister, Betty Abah noted in a piece that desperate times need desperate measures.

On this, Damina should be commended. At least everybody is awake and people are beginning to look through the Bible. The present scenario is akin to what Daddy Freeze did with the issue of tithe a couple of years ago.

Other excesses

But it will be unwise to close our eyes to some other issues about the faith which has brought more confusion to people. Damina’s theology on salvation is good, his anti-prosperity stance is excellent. His frankness on some other issues of faith is brilliant. But picking holes in holy communion, saying, the fire of Elijah is from hell, making snide remarks on some characters in the Bible, saying Jesus did not ascend to heaven and many other off-the-cuff statements are detrimental to the gospel he preaches.

The irony about his new faith experience is that they were inspired by Andrew Wommack, the American hyper-grace preacher. He said he read Wommack’s books and the books made him rethink his former messages. While he picked many good things from Wommack, he would have also picked his errors. And Damina is good at amplifying doctrines. He has successfully done that over time.

The main issue

The issue he has with Enenche however is the claim that he was the one who birthed him into ministry. He once recalled how God asked him to tell Enenche to forget his ambition to pursue a postgraduate medical programme in the UK and go to Abuja to start a ministry. Enenche obeyed and his ministry picked.

A couple of people have confirmed his claim to the point of releasing to social media the Corporate Affairs Commission newspaper adverts which had the names of the trio of Enenche, his wife, and Damina as trustees of Dunamis Gospel Centre. This showed how close they were in the early days of Enenche’s ministry.

Enenche on the other hand has been making frantic efforts to distance himself from Damina. While tactically conceding that he had a link with Damina, he has consistently pushed the narrative that meeting him in the course of ministry was an error. He once said in a message that he had to plead with another man of God to lay hands on him so the negative impact of a hand that was once laid on him would be wiped out. He was apparently referring to Pastor Damina.

Opprobrium to Church

But the pain about this wild drama is that it is bringing opprobrium to the Church. Every day on social media, there is something to listen to from both camps. Damina keeps firing from all cylinders, while Enenche does not give in. One begins to wonder how the pulpits where people should be preached out of the pit of sin and ignorance have become a platform where souls are being buried daily with puerile words.

It is a big shame that these men of God will allow their ego to come to play in the eternal destiny of the congregation they lead. They seem not to have regard for God who has called them. Enenche’s broad-day denying of Damina is a concern. Damina on the other hand believes what is happening to him is a cross he has to carry because of his anti-prosperity stance.

 As it is, many are applauding Damina for his bold anti-prosperity messages. But they lose sight of other insidious messages he preaches which are perhaps more inimical to the body. He is getting applause because many are tired of purveyors of prosperity messages.

Need for a truce

The question is: Who will settle this fight between these two preachers of the gospel? What role are the acclaimed fathers of faith playing in this? It is gladdening that Damina made a profound statement in a recent message that relationships are more important than issues. He probably was beginning to have a rethink on the feud between him and Enenche. We don’t have to agree on every line of the scriptures. Paul and Barnabas did not agree on John Mark’s involvement with them in the ministry, yet they both did not get into mudslinging. That is the point the duo of Enenche and Damina should come to terms with. it is okay to disagree, but it is evil to become bitter and egregious in our state of disagreement

By Gbenga Osinaike