My God! Bishop Victor Onuigbo, my spiritual leader, dead? Jesus! God, please let this not be true!
This was a member of Victory Cathedral Church, Enugu weeping at the news of the sudden death of the spiritual leader of the church, Most Rev. Professor Victor Onuigbo. Onuigbo, shockingly, died alongside his wife, Florence and four other persons in an auto crash along the busy Enugu/Onitsha expressway late last month, Saturday December 20.
At the moment, doctors are battling to save the lives of two children of Bishop Onuigbo who sustained multiple injuries during the fatal accident.
KlinReports learnt the Onuigbos were returning from a wedding ceremony from a village in their Anambra state home before they met their untimely death. Bishop Onuigbo, traveling in the company of his wife and children, had pulled up by the road side to ease himself when another car, with four inmates (youths), skidded off the road and rammed into his stationary car. It was gathered that the youths and the bishop’s wife died instantly while the Bishop gave up the ghost later.
The violent death of Bishop Onuigbo, the celebrated televangelist, indeed, doubles the grief and anguish of his congregation, as he (the Bishop) had two years back, on May 6, 2006, lost his son, Chukwunwike, a pastor and two other ministers of his church in similar circumstances. Chukwunwike, an Electrical/Electronic Engineer, as well his father’s heir, alongside Pastors A.N.C Joel and Alex Nnamchi, perished in the same car crash on the same highway while returning from the same wedding ceremony of a member of their church.
The ill-fated pastors had, alongside their flock on the fateful day, traveled to Onitsha, Anambra state, to attend a wedding ceremony of a zealous member of the church, Chinwe Anakudoh. It was, in fact, a hilarious occasion as the congregation, with their guests, clicked tumblers and threw banters with the founder of the church, Bishop Onuigbo, who himself was in attendance at the wedding reception.
In a humorous twist at that occasion, Bishop Onuigbo had asked the three pastors when they themselves would, also, get married like the bride and the bridegroom. The Bishop’s joke threw the pastors into hilarious laughter, with each of them insisting that the other would have to get married first. At last, the young ministers jocularly reached a consensus to respectively get married and settle down like their newly wedded church member.
Bishop Onuigbo, subsequently, bade farewell to his congregation and their guests, and raced back to Enugu. But unknown to the 62 year old Bishop, that was to be his last joke with his beloved pastors, as the cold hands of death awaited them on the high that evening. The Bishop was to be later alerted on the tragedy that befell his church.
It was learnt that the accident that claimed the three pastors occurred when the L300 Mitshubisi bus, belonging to the church, in which the pastors and their flock were traveling back to Enugu developed a fault on its right rear wheel.
In an interview late Bishop Onuigbo then granted us, he tearfully narrated: "The occupants of the bus asked the driver not to apply the break, but he went ahead to suddenly stop the vehicle, resulting in the bus somersaulting several times and killing my three pastors. Many of the occupants sustained various degrees of injuries and were hospitalized same day".
And part of the lamentation of Bishop Onuigbo then was that his pastors died in their prime when the church and mankind needed their services most. It is tear evoking that Bishop Onuigbo was yet to fully recover from the tragic loss of his young ministers, who were noted for their closeness, when his own tragedy occurred a few days ago.
There is no gainsaying the fact that death toll in the Victory Cathedral Church has weighed down the congregation, as the headquarters of the church in Enugu remains deserted by dumbstruck faithful.
Bishop Onuigbo had, before he fell victim to this spate on inexplicable accidents, declared that the accident that claimed the life of his son and the others strengthened the church. But now that the respected cleric is no more, courtesy of highway mishap, it is uncertain on whose spiritual shoulders the church, an upbeat Christian organization, and its grieving worshippers would lean.
But since God, whom all the dead served, is the author of life and death, KlinReports family says, ‘May their Souls Rest in Perfect Peace’.
4 comments:
having spent three years under the Archbishop as a student and then spending fours years in his home as a missionary from the united states, I will miss him and his wife as they were like family to me. I am sadened as the news and hope that those that are left to bear the burden will carry on the view that he had to minister to the poor, feed the orphans, visit the widow, and preach the gospel of the good news of Jesus Christ, near and far.
"Brother Victor" is the way that I remember him. I was just 12 years old when he invited my Father, Gary Whetstone and I to come visit Nigeria. Little did we know that many years later, I would marry the son of the Late Archbishop Benson Idahosa, Feb Idahosa, and that I would live my life here in this great country, Nigeria.
I pray for his family and his church that God will grant them the grace to continue and that they will go from strength to strength. This is indeed a very sad loss for me and for Nigeria. May their souls rest in peace. Rev. Mrs. Laurie Idahosa
He visited my family in New York.
I was a college student in my Final year in Enugu when this tragic incident occurred. I still remember vividly how I use to await his 30 minutes TV broadcast every Sunday evening titled Hour of Hope, with keen interest. That programme was highly sold inspiring. May their souls continue to rest in peace, Amen.
Post a Comment