Financial-independence-preaching pastor, Olumide Emmanuel, has recalled how turbulent his first marriage was.
He first married a woman called Ify but the marriage did not last.
He alleged the woman insulted his wife even on their wedding day.
According to him, the ex-wife, whom he later discovered had divorced twice, left with their two children whom he has never seen since 2006.
Emmanuel, in a recent interview, recalled an incident where they both went to see Pastor Olukoya since he was Ify’s father in the Lord. Before they got to Olukoya, she had given him certain dos and don’ts. But by the time they got to Olukoya, Pastor Emmanuel said he was his usual jovial self.
According to ‘Churchtimes’, he said he was so relaxed with Pastor Olukoya seeing the simplicity of the man of God. He chatted with him as if they had known themselves for a long time. Unknown to him, his to-be wife was not comfortable with that kind of familiarity.
On their way home, she bared her fangs and expressed disgust at Emmanuel’s behaviour during the visit pointing out how arrogant and self-conceited he was.
There was a hot argument on their way home. Some tantrums were thrown at Emmanuel which made him decide to call off the relationship. “But she came to plead later with her family. When she went to Church that Sunday, she went to Dr. Olukoya after service and told him what happened. Pastor Olukoya told her, if you miss that man, you are gone. All those things she was fighting me for were what Pastor Olukoya used to validate me.”
Pastor Olukoya prayed with her and said I would walk back to the relationship. And that is what happened. “I walked back to the relationship.”
Emmanuel, who said the divorce had caused him a lot of trauma and made him lose relationships, said he realised his ex-wife was in the prison of her past. “I realised that her experiences before our marriage had damaged her and she needed to be healed. But she was not healed. I knew what to do. But she was carried away by religion.”
He went ahead with the marriage only to discover that the abuse he had suffered during the courtship grew worse.
He recalled that she walked out on his parents on the day of the wedding. “After the wedding, she went to greet my mother in the family house. As she was coming, my mother and other family members tried to welcome her saying our wife has come.
“She flipped when she heard our wife and said I am not your wife I am my husband’s wife and that she does not want to be seen as the wife of all; in the traditional setting arrangement. Before everybody, she turned around and left. I followed her. That was the beginning of the marriage.”
Ex-wife was prayer warrior
Emmanuel said the marriage was to be later a combination of all kinds of stuff for about 10 years.
Ironically, his ex-wife according to him was a prayer machine. “I have not been able to reach her level of prayers. She prays an average of three hours every night.”
But the prayers, according to Emmanuel, did not change her. “It was more of the fall down and die prayer. And I used to tell her that “prayer should change you first”. But she was not experiencing that change. It was a major battle. The abuse at home was heavy, physical abuse was there.”
He said his ex-wife slapped him at least six times in the nine years of the marriage.
While declaring that he never lifted a hand against her, he said, “I never abandoned her. She left the house one day and was gone. We did all kinds of things to save the marriage. I did my part. We had sessions with Dr. Olukoya, and Bishop Oyedepo but all to no avail.”
