Popular Punch columnist, AAbimbola Adelakun, has narrated her experience at the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly – aka COZA – during her visit to the church on Sunday.
The visit, which according to her was purely an academic/research one, turned controversial when officers of the church detained her based on their belief that she was there to do an undercover story about them.
COZA has been in the news since Busload, wife of celebrated artiste, Simi Dakota, accused its pastor, Biodun Fatoyinbo, of raping her.
In her Thursday article in ‘The Punch’, Adelakun explained that she had no cause to spy on COZA as she was not even a reporter.
She submitted:
“On Sunday in Abuja, I attended the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly church and ended up with some sensation. My quest was a purely academic one. I study Pentecostalism and Pentecostal culture, and I traverse different churches everywhere to see if the observations that I make about trends and practices are generalisable across the spectrum.
“So, at COZA, I sat in the church and soon after brought out my field notebook where I document my impressions for later reflections. As the service was rounding off, a man approached me and asked if it was my first time in the church. I answered in the affirmative. He asked me to follow him outside the church to meet those who talked to first-timers. But he took me to a tent outside the gate where some others were sitting and asked me to wait. There was no explanation than an unsatisfactory command to “wait.” After waiting for a prolonged while, I asked to leave. That was when another man standing nearby told me I could not.
“He gave no further explanation, just a curious command to wait that would eventually run into hours. The wait was exhausting and psychologically enervating. I worried that no one knew what was going on with me. I called a close friend who sometimes worked with me during my fieldwork and told him I was being detained at the church. He asked if I had a name or anything. I did not. With my phone, I took a picture of the man who would not let me leave. I sent it to my friend and told him to keep it with him as an electronic trail of my whereabouts. I could have reached my sister, but I did not want to alarm my family. When I tried to leave again, the man told two women wearing peace corps uniform to bar me. They did, took my phone, and even sprained my left thumb in the process.
Later they told me they knew I worked with PUNCH and I had come to spy on them to report as news. That allegation was entirely untrue. One, I am not a reporter in that sense. All the information I used in writing my recent article for this column, “What does Mrs. Fatoyinbo know?” was already in the public domain. I did not need any furtive digging. Two, what I study is the Pentecostal movement itself and not any specific church. I pencil down churches for visits for reasons ranging from demographics to their innovations. I had done some prior study on COZA through their social media pages, and since I happened to be in Abuja that day, I thought I should compare my impressions with some live experience. There is nothing that I wanted that required spying on them; there is more than enough information already archived with the public. Besides, I was not writing on their church specifically. If I were, I would have gone through the necessary process of compliance with the rules and ethics of studying people. It would not have been a one-off visit done while passing through the town. Also, if I knew that they screened the church auditorium for faces, I would have moved to another church on my list. I have no use for controversies.
“It turned out that when my friend could no longer reach me, he reached out to other friends. For hours, they tried to contact me. When they failed, they got worried that I had been harmed. Then they decided to tweet out my ordeal. All that time, I still did not have my phone on me and therefore had no idea what had been triggered on social media. I was informed by the church officials when they came to where I was seated and said they wanted to take the case to the Police. They produced a vehicle, and we headed for the police station. Fortunately, when my sister – herself a lawyer – saw that I did not show at her place as scheduled, she came to the church to look for me. She arrived just on time to follow us to the station.”
She, however, noted that, after some argument at the station, the matter was resolved, with the church becoming conciliatory.
