Posted by By MODESTUS CHUKWULAKA, Abuja on
A businessman who joined many others in worship at the Aso Rock chapel with the hope of securing mouth-watering deals, courtesy of his association with the sacked chaplain, Rev. Yusuf Obaje, is still counting his losses. And lamenting that he had been fooled.
* ‘He promised to use his influence to give me Coja contract. But he was only fooling me.'
A businessman who joined many others in worship at the Aso Rock chapel with the hope of securing mouth-watering deals, courtesy of his association with the sacked chaplain, Rev. Yusuf Obaje, is still counting his losses. And lamenting that he had been fooled.
He told Daily Sun, "He had me for a sucker. I am sad and mad at him."
By his own admission, Chief Austine Okoro's invitation to worship at the Villa was not by happenstance.
According to him, it was a former presidential aide, now deceased, who introduced him to the founding chaplain of the chapel, Prof. Yusuf Obaje.
With time, Okoro adopted Obaje as his spiritual father, believing that his big breakthrough was only a matter of time. Luckily for him, the All African Games hosted by Nigeria was around the corner, and the businessman learnt that COJA, the local organising committee for the games, was dishing out billions of naira in contracts.
Being a representative of a clothing concern that deals in designer Italian wears and accessories, Okoro thought of how he could be part of the COJA largesse.
The idea struck him that he could offer to clothe the top government functionaries, including members of the federal cabinet.
He quickly sent a sample of a green-white-green designer suit, a pair of shoes and an expensive leather belt to Obaje, accompanied with a proposal to supply the same to the top echelon of government and the COJA leadership for their participation in the games.
"Immediately he saw it he said that President Obasanjo would like it," Okoro said, and told Daily Sun that the suit, shoes and belt he gave to Obaje cost N120, 000, N70, 000 and N30, 000 respectively.
He also claimed that his spiritual father
eventually introduced him to Dr. Amos Adamu and other top members of COJA who he said also received their own free samples, promising to give him the contract he was prospecting. Okoro further claimed that Obaje returned to him later and said President Olusegun Obasanjo was enthralled by the outfit when he saw it on Obaje and had asked that the gesture be extended to the other pastors of the chapel. Obaje, he said, even went to his shop at Harmonia Hotel and made a very powerful prayer.
By the last count, Okoro reckoned that he spent over $60,000 (over N8 million) in complimentary wears to the powerful men he felt were in a position to help him secure the contract he was looking for.
Surprisingly, the contract was not forthcoming, and Obaje kept telling him to keep exercising patience while he "pressed the necessary buttons."
When Okoro began to suspect that he might not get anything after all despite the hope and money he had invested in the prospective contract, he decided to take the bull by the horn. On a fateful Sunday morning, while at the chapel, he broke protocol and handed over a letter to Obasanjo even before his security details could know what was happening.
Understandably, this did not go down well with the security details who reported the matter to Obaje. The chaplain himself was said to have been much more infuriated because Okoro had used the opportunity of the brief encounter with the president to tell him that he was the person who distributed the green suits to his pastors free of charge.
Okoro said Obaje's reaction was swift: "You know he was the ‘god' of that place. He barred me from the chapel. Yet I clothed the entire pastors free of charge. None of them can say he doesn't know Austine Moore."
Okoro said his sack from the powerful chapel was the beginning of his troubles. Soon the company he was representing its interests dumped him for his failure to secure the juicy COJA contracts. He had problem with his landlord and his property was in court.
He said he wrote countless letters to his erstwhile spiritual father none of which was replied. He made countless calls to the man's office and homes, both in Abuja and Lokoja, and said Obaje never picked his calls again. Okoro who showed copies of some of the letters he allegedly wrote to Obaje to Daily Sun said he was so shocked by Obaje's attitude that he began to wonder if indeed he was the man of God he claimed to be.
"He kept telling me he would help me until I was sacked from the chapel and my house. I never saw him again. Even the day he launched his book at Hilton, his personal assistant barred me from entering the hall until the present chaplain insisted that I must enter," he said.
To prove that the man of God was never really interested in helping him, he said that when he lost his mother while in the thick of financial troubles, and a few days after the wife had put to bed, Obaje did not do anything to help him.
"He said I should bring my family to the Presidential Villa while we are on our way to the village. He prayed for me and gave me N2,000 in N20 denomination; that was how I knew that the man was callous," said he. Okoro said he was relieved to know that Obasanjo has eventually seen what he saw way back and ditched the former chaplain. All the same, he said, he is still full of regrets not only because he knew the man, but also because he took him for his words.