Nigeria’s oldest’s Pastor and founder of 42-year-old Gospel Apostolic Church, Pa Samuel Sadela may have died Tuesday, though top officials in his ministry say he is sick and receiving treatment in an undisclosed hospital.
A visit by Naijalog correspondent yesterday to the church shows that a condolence register has been opened.
Also other church leaders have been extolling his virtues.
One of the senior pastors at the church, Femi Atode, said though the church’s President was receiving treatment in hospital, there was no indication that he had passed on.
According to Atode, for the past five years, Pa Sadela who turned 114 years recently did not miss church programmes until last Sunday. He said the information regarding his death was mere speculation by members of the public.
‘’It is a mere speculation that the old man is dead. Though he is aged, he still performed his church roles until last Sunday.
“Perhaps people are apprehensive that he was absent last Sunday, but believe me, the man is alive but hospitalised.
“If such a thing has happened, the church would have announced it,” Atode, who described the oldest preacher in Nigeria as a man with a large heart, said the summer coaching he started is on-going (pointing to a near-by building).
“I believe the place would have been locked if the founder is dead. He instructed us to start a summer coaching since 1992 and thousands of students have benefited from this without paying a penny.
Sadela’s pastoral calling started in 1928 when he visited the famous Prophet Moses Orimolade of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church.
When he marked his 113th last year birthday, the aged pastor had expressed hope to live up to 200 years of age.
He had said “I feel happy to be this old. Actually, I feel like a young man. I still enjoy my meal of Iyan (pounded yam), Eba and bush meat. I sleep whenever I want to and wake up stronger I want to live longer to prove to all that God remains the same as He was in times past. If Methuselah could live for 969 years, God can make me live well beyond 113. If Noah could be 950, it is not too much for Him to make me live up to 200.”
Even if that wish was not granted, Sadela left an indelible imprint in the hearts of his members and admirers around the world.
The cleric, who claimed angels taught him to read the Holy Bible when he was only two years of age, raised not a few eye brows when he married a 30-year-old woman in 2007.
“The Lord is my strength. I am very strong and energetic,” he was quoted as saying after the wedding in Lagos.
According to reports, he first got married in 1934, with the marriage lasting for 21 years, but none of the couple’s seven children reportedly lived beyond their infancy. A second marriage, said to have been consummated in 1965, was blessed with four children, but only two survived. His second wife died in 2001.
A native of Ondo State, Sadela attended St. Paul’s Anglican Primary School, Ifon, Osun State, but had to drop out when he travelled to Sapele, Delta State to work as houseboy to one Captain Pullen, a District Officer. Sadela however retraced his steps in 1918 and completed his Standard six education in 1920.