Heaven by Road: Pastor Abraham’s Botched Rapture Could Still End Tragically

That year, the world seemed cursed. Naira was crashing against the dollar, and the price of a 50 kg bag of rice was nearing ₦50,000. Politicians, crisscrossing the country ahead of the general elections, offered no real answers to kidnappings, terrorist killings, and gunmen violence.

At Christ High Commission, a church in Ekiti, South West Nigeria, preparations for what many believed would be the rapture intensified. A pastor declared the end of the world, and members began to arrive from Kaduna, Kabba, Benin, and across the country. 

“We saw it in the time of Noah,” said Badakin, a member of the church who went with his entire family.

Now, over three years later, many followers are still camping with the pastor as the date for the rapture keeps changing. An expert is now warning that the exercise could end tragically for all involved, as the pastor’s actions are consistent with those who usually eventually end up committing suicide or mass murder, as we have seen happen in similar cases across the continent.

For this group, the rapture was not a metaphor. The church, to them, was literally a high commission, a gateway to heaven. The pastor, Ade Abraham, was consumed with the idea. In Kabba, where he first founded his church, he carefully prepared members.

“He taught us how to be worthy, the things the Bible teaches about sin – how to be holy in career, marriage, and worship,” said Dare Ikuenayo, who served as the church’s choir master. 

As members arrived in Ekiti, they camped in a gated compound in Araromi Ugbesi, a village in Ekiti East Local Government Area. The property, once a Cherubim and Seraphim Church, housed a residential apartment where Pastor Abraham lived, an auditorium that served as the church hall, and a modest hostel that accommodated communal dining and meetings.

There, at least 40 people, including workers who left their jobs, students who abandoned school, and a corps member who fled service, lived in daily anticipation of the rapture.

“His [Pastor Abraham’s] own son, who had just spent one month at NYSC, was withdrawn to come and wait,” said Badakin, referring to the compulsory National Youth Service for Nigerian graduates.

“His second son, who was in 300 level in FUTA, also came down…My daughter in Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, just finished her second semester examination in the second year,” Badakin continued. “On the second day, we all converged in Omuo … before Kaduna people came to meet us there.”

A prophet’s unravelling 

Pastor Abraham had only finished primary school when a relative took him from Omuo-Ekiti, his hometown, to Kaduna. He lived there for many years, learned welding and married Mary, the woman who would later follow him to Kabba, a town in Kogi State, North Central Nigeria. In Kabba, he began as a farmer, then moved into selling electrical appliances. Eventually, he founded a church.

He built the church alone, said some Kabba residents who spoke with the Nigerian online newspaper ICIR in April 2022. “He can start any house from the scratch, roof it, put the electrical appliances and do the plumbing without any assistance.”

Although it is unclear if he went beyond primary school, Pastor Abraham conducted his services in English. For members who struggled with the language, he used an interpreter.

He was “too smart,” said one Kabba resident to ICIR. To his wife, Pastor Abraham was a caring man, the kind of “man every woman will love to have as a husband.” To the congregation, he was a strict and disciplined pastor. On Sundays, he locked the door at 8:00 a.m., so that no one could come in once the service had begun. 

“His ministry was different from other pastors,” Dare told me on the phone. “I went to his church because I believed what he believed. I believed Jesus, righteousness, holiness.”

Pastor Abraham would later establish a branch in Kaduna, where he appointed Badakin as pastor.

“Mostly, the teaching in Kabba was about the rapture and the preparation,” said Badakin.

“I saw Christ live, and I held Him live, and I felt Him live.”

A botched rapture 

At the camp, preparations went beyond prayers. Pastor Abraham assigned members the roles they would play in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

“I was selected among those who would coordinate work,” Anike, the pastor’s older sister and ex-church member, told me. “They said I wouldn’t work but would be paid. They said my office would be to the left.”

Villagers narrated how Pastor Abraham drove to the market several times and loaded his vehicle with tomatoes and other foodstuffs. Campers would cross the road to gather firewood, which they used to cook behind the hostel. In a video recorded at the camp in 2022, large cooking pots blackened from repeated use could be seen.

“You could not go out to buy food,” said Badakin.

Everyone bore the pastor’s surname, residents told me in the village. “If you asked, one might say, ‘My name is Joke Abraham.’ “

The day of the rapture, however, kept changing.

“He [Pastor Abraham] said whenever we heard the humming of a big vehicle in the middle of the night, we should hold any child we wanted to take along, climb onto the vehicle, and we would find ourselves in the Kingdom of Heaven,” said Anike.

“He once told us we were going the following week. But when the week arrived, he shifted it, saying some [of the campers] had done things Baba frowned at.” 

And Pastor Abraham is not the kind to joke with sin. 

“He almost flogged some, even those who were older than him,” Anike continued.

By April 2022, concern had started to grow outside the camp. A man whose sister and two children were inside began reaching out to journalists for help. His sister had taken the children to the camp without their father’s consent and had even sent a WhatsApp message to her son abroad, urging him to return home in time for the rapture.

When the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) spoke with one of the campers, she said, “We are not coming back.” 

The member, who sought anonymity, had pulled out of school to join the team. “… it’s hard to accept that I won’t attend school anymore and rapture is coming soon,” she said.

As one of the many chosen days neared, members of the group began to sell their belongings. The pastor himself, according to Anike, sold his three cars. 

Media reports would, however, bring the entire journey to a halt. It rattled Pastor Abraham. Some people believed his intention was to fleece his followers; others thought his followers were simply stupid. The police arraigned him over the ₦310,000 he had asked each member to pay into his account before coming to camp. The pastor would later describe the payment to journalists as “a sacrifice,” while Anike told me it was meant to grant them a pass at the gate of heaven.

The dark side of faith 

Faith that refuses to listen or acknowledge other people’s views could be interpreted as delusion, Chioma Onyemaobi, a clinical psychologist, told me.

Suicide bombers belong here, and charismatic preachers divorced from reality: Maitatsine. Jim Jones. Credonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibweteere, who in 2000 orchestrated a similar camping that ended in mass death.

Pastor Abraham shares many similarities with Joseph Kibweteere. Like him, he preached an apocalyptic end, when only members gathered at a spot would be saved. Like him, he set multiple dates for the end of the world, each passing without event. And like Kibweteere, his transformation didn’t fully take shape until he encountered Anabel, his choirmaster’s wife, after which his visions became more urgent.

Anabel’s careless prophecies eventually “scattered” the Kabba church, Badakin revealed.

The making of “God”

The man who arrived in Araromi Ugbesi in August 2021 was no longer the one who had founded a modest church in Kabba. He had seen death, the death of a member’s son right inside his church. 

The man who arrived in Araromi could lie. He had taken a church member’s wife and sent his own away. He had demolished the church he built alone, abandoned his home, and fled his base. 

Above all, the man who arrived in Araromi was no longer a man. He believed himself “God”.

In Kabba, Pastor Abraham had told his followers he was the leader of the end-time revival. But in Araromi, he wasn’t just a messenger anymore. He spoke of a Kingdom of Heaven where he would be king. 

The pastor was born Prince Adelegan Fasiku, and was the fifth and last child of a wife of Oba Abraham Fasiku, then Olomuo, ruler of Omuo-Ekiti Kingdom.

“He [Pastor Abraham] said, ‘Those of you still calling Jesus, Jesus has finished his own work,’ ” Anike told me in her late husband’s house in Araromi.

She spoke not with the affection with which one speaks of a younger brother, the one to whom you passed your mother’s breasts. Rather, she spoke with the tone of one who has been betrayed: “The bond of siblinghood is broken between us.”

“He said he saw the heart, and I made sure my heart was one with him,” said Anike.

“When he arrived, he told me never to call him Ade, so I called him ‘Father.’ “

In the Araromi church, no one mentioned the name of God, Anike told me. “Instead, we called ‘Baba’. He said he was Baba and his wife was Oluaye.”

“The moment we entered the church, they would lock the door behind us.”

“There were three red seats (arms made of iron) in front, where no one was allowed to sit. You must bend over while walking past them. He said they belonged to the elders.”

Recounting his encounter with Pastor Abraham, Rev. Taiwo Adewunmi, the immediate past chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in the LGA, told me in his office: “He never mentioned Jesus. He would say, ‘Baba.’”

“That was when we began to see that things were going wrong,” said Badakin. “The name of Jesus was no longer mentioned.”

He also used a different Bible from the standard one. Perhaps most surprising, however, was how easily his members, the same people he had once groomed in scripture and trained to be Christians, embraced his new doctrines.

When he became involved with Anabel, his choirmaster’s wife, under unclear circumstances, some of his members revolted. But when he was chased out of Kabba for refusing to let go of her, some members left with him.

“Some are still with him,” Dare, Annabel’s husband, told me. “The moment you believe someone, you believe them.”

Disappointed, however, some ex-members of Christ High Commission in Kabba no longer go to church, according to Dare.

After a botched rapture 

More than three years after the botched rapture, many are still camping with Pastor Abraham in Ekiti, including Anike’s daughter and her husband, whom the pastor had brought from Benin. 

Badakin’s three children are still camping with Pastor Abraham. One was a medical sales representative, who arrived at the camp in his official car.

“We’ve been to so many places to see what we can do, but at the end of the day, we’re still waiting for the court,” said Badakin, who believes it was God who got him out.

While a case is in court and the group has been driven from their original location, they’ve found shelter nearby. I visited their new camp, a modest bungalow owned by one of Pastor Abraham’s relatives in Kota, a neighbouring town to Araromi. His son told me the person who could have spoken with me was attending a meeting, and his father was too busy to entertain yet another journalist.

“There is something called delusional narcissism,” Chioma, the psychologist, told me. “People with narcissistic personality disorder can be delusional in the sense that they perceive the world differently (fantasy world). So now he [Pastor Abraham] is dragging people into this fantasy, or rather, the delusion he has created, and from the story, it doesn’t look like he is letting go.”

Disaster looming 

On March 17, 2000, after multiple failed apocalyptic prophecies, Joseph Kibweteere and other leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God gathered their followers for a party in Kanungu, a town in the Western Region of Uganda. They had purchased 50 litres of sulphuric acid. Shortly after the members arrived, a massive explosion rocked the compound, killing all 530 people in what has been described as mass murder or suicide.

Anike believes their own rapture might have ended the same way. 

“I’m only grateful we did not take off on the chosen day,” she told me. “Who knows whether we would have been set ablaze?”

But danger still lurks. 

People suffering from narcissistic personality disorder or delusions have the tendency to commit suicide, said Chioma.

And in November 2023, when Pastor Abraham resurfaced in the press, he appeared to hint at it: “The prophecy is that I have concluded my job and I am on my way to the one that sent me.”

“I hope he isn’t too delusional to commit mass murder,” said Chioma. “But then, persons with narcissistic personality disorder or delusions have the tendency to commit suicide. If things like depression, despair, challenges, and failure are in the picture, then we have to be worried because suicidal thoughts are not far away.”

Rev. Taiwo believes anyone who’s not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission or any of the recognised religious associations in the country should not be allowed to own a church.

When asked, Badakin said Christ High Commission was never registered. Pastor Abraham had moved from the Living Faith Church, also known as Winners’ Chapel, to the Church of God of Prophecy, where he headed a branch, Badakin revealed. It was when a crisis divided the branch that he went with some members to start his own.

A news report may have saved most of the 40 members of Christ High Commission from a disastrous end, but the fate of the few still camping is uncertain.