Ahead of Sundays AFCON final, the General Overseer of The Synagogue Church Of All Nations, Prophet Temitope Balogun Joshua, says Nigeria’s Super Eagles would defeat Burkina Faso.
T.B Joshua, who warned Eagles’ coach, Stephen Keshi to avoid conceding a late minute goal in their AFCON Group C opener against the Burkinabe, told P.M.NEWS that Nigeria’s case in the Nations Cup final this year is like the biblical Jacob who wrestled with God, saying that “on Sunday we’ll tell God unless He gives us our heart’s desire we’ll not let Him go”.
“The cloud is darker over Nigeria’s Super Eagles, but with God we’ll scale through. If it were not to be the final, anything could have happened. The first match we played with Burkina Faso, it was just by the grace of God that it ended in a draw.
“On Sunday, our opponents will play defensively because they will be looking out for penalty shootout at the end of the game. They will also play through three of their strikers upfront; one of them very tall and huge player and two others.
“What I’m seeing I don’t want to say it because it would be too frightening, but I want to assure that we’ll scale through the challenge on Sunday.”
The prophet who established a football club, My People FC to groom young players, however, warned the Eagles not to allow Burkina Faso to score first in the final, saying that “if this happened the Burkinabe would fall back to defend the goal, which will be very dangerous for our team. I still repeat that no matter the situation, we’ll scale through.
“The Burkina Faso that we played in the group stage will not be the same team we’ll play on Sunday, even though some of their players are out of the squad due to injuries. They are still a team. But I hope for celebration.”
Joshua said as the giant of Africa, Nigeria last won the Nations Cup 13 years ago, which was too long ago for a great football nation like Nigeria.
“I think God should give us this cup to make the youths of this country happy. Winning this cup at this time of religious intolerance and violence will calm down the youths.
I want to appeal to all Nigerians to pray for Eagles’ victory. I would have told you the scoreline but I would rather delay it till Sunday morning in order not psychologically distract the players and their coaches and not to demoralise the losing team.”
Prophet Joshua concluded that he would not want Keshi and his team to come to his church to celebrate their victory after the match because he is not the only one praying for the Eagles to win.
“My voice may be the one louder among the men of God in the country but this doesn’t mean that the team should come to my church to celebrate.
I would rather prefer that they celebrate their victory with all Nigerians,” he said