My wife and I were invited to a birthday worship-cum-dinner party on Independence Day on 1 October 2025 by a bosom friend. During the dinner, I overheard the celebrant and a mutual friend discussing that Rev. Uma Ukpai had been flown into a hospital in Lekki, Lagos and was in a bad state or something like that. He mentioned that he, along with other brethren, had gone to see him at the hospital. Though I didn’t hear all they were saying, I think I heard something like the Reverend resisting his body being subjected to all manner of treatment. My reading of the situation was that the respected Reverend would be fine.
It didn’t turn out that way. Two days ago, the media was awash with the news of the departure of this fiery and fearless clergyman. The man had breathed his last on earth on Monday, 6 October 2025. But the family broke the news a week after. Hours after the news of his passing broke, tributes poured in from all around the nation.
He lived a spartan lifestyle. His house at Ewet Housing Estate, Uyo, just facing Oron Road in the Akwa Ibom State capital is ordinary. A low fenced yard with a small duplex. Nothing extraordinary. But the man of the ordinary house was far from being ordinary. He walked where many feared; he moved mountains by the fortitude of his faith in his Maker; he turned that house to a haven for many.
My wife and I had a rare privilege to have had a direct encounter with this man of God in 2005.
A bit of a background. Early in 2005, my wife and I had to fly from Eket in Akwa Ibom State to Lagos to attend a crusade by the world renowned televangelist Rev. Benny Hinn. The crusade held at the Redemption Camp (the Redeemed Christian Church of God world headquarters) on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. We went there specifically for one main purpose: to seek the face of God for a child. We had already been married for nearly three years without a child.
By Nigerian standards, the crusade appeared ordinary; not much drama. And, a programme we had thought was an overnight affair, ended just after 10 pm. But the power of God moved mightily through his servant as we witnessed many miracles.
We left the crusade ground trusting that God had heard our prayers. Before then, we had experienced two miscarriages. Little did we know that we were also direct beneficiaries of the night of miracles as we realised a week or two after that we were pregnant.
That pregnancy, as in the first two, became threatened. We didn’t want it to go the way of the previous ones. This is how Dr. Ukpai came into the picture.
I contacted a friend of mine (now late) from Ibeno who was an ardent member of Ukpai’s ministry, called Uma Ukpai Evangelistic Association as I needed the Reverend to pray for us. My friend told me he would arrange for us to meet with the Reverend in his house in Uyo. He did. At the appointed time, my friend walked us into the living room but the Reverend asked that we should be brought to the upstairs family lounge of the house where he was waiting for us.
He appeared to us as one in control of situations around him; nothing could disturb him. This was based on his absolute confidence in the power of His God. When we met him, he first made us comfortable. He asked a few questions such as where we came from, when we got married, how our marriage had been, our character traits, the ministry we were under and such like. He was sizing us up as an experienced psychologist and counsellor. When he knew that my wife and I were from different ethnic groups, he teed off with his views on intertribal marriages, how to create harmony in homes and other issues.
He then assured us that Owoyi, my wife, would get pregnant and bear a child (at that time he didn’t know that she was already pregnant). He advised that we embarked on a weeklong (or was it three days?) reverse fasting. I had not heard of it before but it requires that you stop eating at 3 pm each day and start fasting from that time till the following day.
When Owoyi informed him that she was pregnant and that the pregnancy was being threatened, hence our visit, he advised that she should eat till 6 pm while I waited from 3 pm. He then added matter-of-factly ‘this one (the pregnancy) will stay’. That was all the assurances that we needed. He then prayed for us and we left.
And that pregnancy truly stayed. The product is our beautiful Princess who will be 20 years old early next year. It was not an encounter we would forget.
I had been to or watched a few crusades where Ukpai ministered. He was easily a man of faith, emphatic about the power in the name of Jesus Christ. He made bold and declarative statements about the power of God to change even the most hopeless situations. Miracles were commonplace in his crusades. Much of his gifts were deployed toward evangelism, calling sinners to repent and follow Jesus.
Perhaps the most remarkable story of his faith was how he disarmed armed robbers or kidnappers who took him and his wife to a secluded place. How his captors became tormented by his bold declarations of the power of God in the midst of threat to his life; how they gave him poison to drink and he commanded the poison to turn to tea, drank it and nothing happened to him; how he told his captors that he was going to pray for them to be blind for seven years and they started begging him. That was the man.
In his crusades, miracles were commonplace. If all the miracles God performed by him could be denied, no one would deny the one that happened in his house when one of his sons, born a cripple, gained strength to walk.
Ukpai resourced the body of Christ in no small measure. Though he didn’t run a church, he had many protégés in the ministry. The Akwa Ibom State Christian community, in particular, and the Nigerian Christian movement, in general, have lost a true servant of faith, a General in the Lord’s army. Our loss is Heaven’s gain.
Ukpai may have come from Ohafia in Abia State, but he was an Akwa Ibom State man to the core. His sprawling ministry, including a school of theology, on Four Lanes by Ewet Housing in Uyo, speaks volumes of his work and impact in the society. The nondenominational ministry has been operating out of Uyo for several decades. He was a respected father of faith not only in the state but also in the country.
Last January when he clocked 80, the Christian community celebrated him in a big way as if they knew it would be his last. No less a personality than Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of the RCCG) ministered. During his ministration, Adeboye recollected how the Reverend inspired him in his darkest days after the loss of his son, Dare, Ukpai having earlier lost his two children in one day on their way to a crusade (and still went ahead to hold the crusade) and still standing to declare the faithfulness of God.
I had never watched him preach in a crusade without him singing one particular song of war or faith in Efik-Ibibio: Aniewo etie nte Jehovah, ami mmoyom ami nkwe (Who is like unto our God? I have searched and have not found).
Read below a Facebook article by Rev. Isaac Omolehin of the Word Assembly Ministries, Ilorin on Ukpai:
‘I visited a very good friend of mine, Rev. Dr. Uma Ukpai. While we were discussing, he told me a story of a certain village in Ebonyi State.
‘The white missionaries that were sent there many years ago, were driven away by the villagers. The last missionary that came to evangelise to them, they drove him and he refused to go. Then they said to him ‘‘Okay, we’ll kill you”. When they took him to kill him, he agreed to leave the village but they refused to let him go. He pleaded and begged them to let him travel to a nearby village but they insisted on killing him. They took him outside the village, took sticks to break his skull, the missionary lifted up his hand and said these exact words to them: “I have used the name of Jesus to beg you to allow me leave, but you’ve refused. If you people kill me, nobody in this village will rise above the level of a labourer, there’s nothing you’ll do to go above the level of a labourer”.
‘And for many years in that village, if you like, study all you could, read all you wished, when you graduate, you’ll go to either Abuja or Lagos and use your certificate and expertise as a gateman. Those people from that village struggled for years without seeing the results of their labours.
‘They came to this my evangelist friend, Dr. Uma Ukpai and told him exactly what happened between their forefathers and the missionary and Dr. Uma went there.
‘Uma Ukpai went there and gathered all of them at their village square, their king stood up and said “This is what we inherited — we’re paying a debt we did not owe, our fathers put us in this”.
‘Dr. Uma prayed, removed his shoes and knelt down and prayed. He asked God to overlook and have mercy upon them. He pleaded the blood of Jesus over the village and left.
‘He told me that it wasn’t long before they invited him to that village for thanksgiving and celebration. The veil covering them was broken and good things started happening. That village produced the Governor of that State, 5 commissioners also came from that village and so many wonderful news. It was as if they were getting arrears of their benefits. End of story.
That was the quintessential Rev. Uma Ukpai. Adieu the Elisha of our time!
Esiere is a former journalist
