As a child, he was rough, tough and rebellious. The fault was not entirely his: he was a victim of a broken marriage. Nobody expected him to achieve so much as a result of his rascality.

But that was before he became born again at 16. And God, who writes straight on crooked lines turned his life around. His name is Dr. Dennis Inyang, founder and General Overseer, Sure Word Assembly, based in Okota, Lagos. As he clocks 55, he speaks about his life and challenges.

You often say that you’ve been through issues and challenges in life.

When were the major milestones and turning points?

I had a challenging childhood and that was because my father and my mother were separated. I should ask my dad when next I see him how old I was when that happened because I never saw them together as husband and wife. Well, that left me dangling between two worlds. Growing up, I had the feeling that the environment was quite hostile to me.

Unfortunately, the way I thought I could cope with that was to become rebellious. I don’t think that anyone really expected me to amount to much. But God did. He had His loving eyes on me. Before I traveled far on the road to perdition, He saved me and changed my life forever.

When I decided to go to the university, I did not really know what that would entail. My father was out of the country at that time, trying to find his feet in a strange land and my mother was a Grade Two teacher. The burden fell more on her, but the demands were more than she could bear, so I ended up going through school mostly on charity. Things were rough, but I pulled through with the help of my friends. One particular year, it was a friend that paid my school fees. It was normal for me to spend the holidays with my friends because I really didn’t have a home to return to.

As a result of that experience, I value my friends and place a lot of premium on relationships. Like the scripture says, a brother is born for adversity and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

So, whenever I have an opportunity to be of help to another, I count it a privilege. That was what motivated me to start a scholarship scheme about 10 years ago so as to assist those who are in need, like I was.

We source for funds from kindhearted individuals and corporate organizations. We have been able to help over 20 students so far, in nursery, secondary and tertiary institutions.

Now, let me talk about the challenge I faced in ministry. I know there are many who would like to hear that. Sure Word Assembly started in a tiny room of a brothel with nothing except the clear conviction that I was in the Will of God. I did not know it was a brothel until we showed up for our first service, but there was nothing I could do because we had no money to pay for a fancy place. We could not even afford to print a banner or a signboard. We had no public address system and no musical instruments whatever and I had no money to hire, any. So we got started with a seminar, which had in attendance my wife and I, one convert of ours and three sympathisers who made it clear they would not be members. That was in 1998. Ten years after, we were a church you could not ignore in the Okota community. We had hundreds of worshippers attending our multiple services every Sunday. So, riding that momentum, we moved to an Event Centre, which we got to discover, was not only too expensive but could not give us the comfort we were used to. It was at that point that we decided to move to a land which we had bought few years before then. That movement greatly tested our faith and, but for God, could have snuffed life out of the church. I used to joke to our friends that surviving that period was clear proof that God indeed called me.

Before the movement, Ago Palace Way was good, even if not perfect. I used to jog from my house to our land. But shortly after we moved there, the road completely collapsed and became unmotorable. Just before our church junction there was a big ditch, which buses could not pass. Taxis would not take you beyond there to our church, no matter how much you offered to pay. Those who drove through the ditch with their cars did so at great risk. And that was a risk our members took week after week. Some days before preaching, I would thank the people for coming against all odds. And I meant it. I was touched that our members were so committed. Did we lose some? A lot of people could not cope and dropped out. But majority of our people stood firm. We knew that the road would be fixed, but when, nobody could tell. In the meantime, we kept praying and I kept prophesying over the road.

Whenever I declared that the road would be completed, well-paved, dualised and complete with street lights, the people clapped, but I’m not sure all of them believed it. I had to keep hope alive. The turning point came when, in answer to our prayer, Governor Akin Ambode looked in our direction and fixed that portion of Ago Palace Way. We are still grateful to Governor Ambode for that.

So, what does hitting 55 mean to you?

It means a whole lot. First of all, I am alive and well. I am not doing this interview on life support or even from the hospital bed.

So, God has been good to me. Just being alive is enough to celebrate.

I came close to death four times. The first was during the civil war.

I was about five years old and was going to the stream with my stepmother when I slipped and fell into a well. It was a very deep well full of water. As I was going down, my hand caught a stick. That gave my stepmom the chance to reach down and grab me.

The second close shave with death was as a student in Methodist Secondary School, Nto Ndang, in Ikot Ekpene. I was a member of the school football fan club and we were all crammed into a pick up van heading to the stadium to cheer our school to victory. I was so hemmed in that I could not see the outside. We were singing and drumming. The driver was swerving the van left and right to the rhythm of our songs.

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I can’t tell what happened, but suddenly I heard screaming from everywhere and the next thing was that I saw myself seated by the roadside and policemen all around us. I was told that the vehicle had flipped over severally. Yet, I came out or should I say I was brought out, without a scratch.

Again, while in the University of Calabar, I went from the campus to Ikot Ansa to get some documents needed to collect my bursary. I was on a bike traveling at full speed on the expressway when suddenly a car crossed our path. The bike man and I saw the car but it was too late to do anything. We slammed into the car and I flew into the air. I was going to land head first on the tar, but God in His mercy intervened and provided a small spot filled with sand right on the express and my head landed there. You can imagine what would have happened if my head met the coal tar.

The last one was around year 2000. My wife and I had an event at Ikoyi. We were driving back at about 9pm with a couple we had given a lift. As we turned the bend into Third Mainland bridge, we ran into a group of robbers. It happened so fast that before I knew it, we were surrounded by very young boys, wielding dangerous weapons. They took my wife’s bag. Of course, we did not resist. I don’t know what I did that made one of them to cock his gun to shoot me. But God saved me as another member of the gang jumped at the guy and pushed the gun away. I have recounted these encounters to show how good God has been to me.

He preserved me because He had a purpose for my life. My joy and contentment is that I’m living out that purpose today.

Every birthday offers opportunities for retrospection. What will change henceforth for you at 55?

I don’t think anything will change. What could change had changed when I turned 50. I realized I am no more a child and took on a greater sense of urgency in everything. I gave myself 20 years to do all the rough and tumble, in a manner of speaking. After that I will change gear. Turning 55 means that I have used up five of the 20 years.

My life’s mission is to make champions of ordinary men and to help them to become everything God created them to be. I do that through the church ministry, Sure Word Assembly, my youth empowerment platform, Excel Africa, and through my books. That is an assignment that consumes me. God has been good to me. I am 55, but I feel 45 and some people have even accused me of looking 35. He is renewing my youth like the Eagle’s.

You waited for over 20 years to have your biological children, what kept you going for that long and what lessons did you learn?

 This was the mother of all challenges. I have documented that experience in a book I wrote for men called Waiting Dad: What Should a Man Do When the Babies Are Yet to Come?  I got married at the age of 27. I am an only son and you know what that means in our culture. My wife was 24 and both of us were just in love. Initially, children were not on our minds. We even took some contraceptives to make sure she didn’t get pregnant. After a few years, we thought we were ready. That was when we realized there was a problem.

My first reaction was that of a typical African man who thinks that when the baby has delayed to come, it must be the woman’s problem. You know, that African type that would not even follow his wife to see a doctor or accept to do a basic fertility test. After some years, I knew I had to do something because time was running fast. So, my wife and I started seeing doctors, and we saw all types. Some would make us feel that with a little treatment, my wife would get pregnant in no time. It did not happen and we were heartbroken. And some would give us diagnosis that made the situation seem hopeless. But we refused to give up.

It is easy to talk about it now, but waiting for a baby is not a pleasant experience. It is more difficult for a teacher of faith like me. But in spite of my experience, I kept teaching that there is no impossibility with God. I would stand out there in church with my wife sitting right in front and declare that by covenant, no woman who is born again is barren. The devil would whisper to me, “What of your wife?” And I would answer, “She’s not barren!” I really believed that my wife would give birth to children one day, no matter what and no matter how long. That was because I saw in God’s Word that if we served the Lord, none would be barren.

Did I mention that we did some surgeries?

My wife did a surgery to remove fibroid, while I underwent what they call a vericocelectomy.

When all the specialist physicians and consultants didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, we tried IVF. That also didn’t work. Then we tried immunotherapy and it failed. So, we just waited on God. At a point, we stopped praying for children. Whether it was prayer fatigue or faith, I don’t know. I told my wife that we had prayed long enough and God was not deaf. So we would pray and fast for every other thing, except for children.

In all those years, putting away my wife or having a child by another woman were never options. Why? Because I love my wife. It did not matter to me whether she gave birth to a baby or not. I did not see her primarily as a baby making machine, but a lover and a life companion. And you know what? In over 20 years of waiting for a baby, my wife and I never quarreled over it in any way. Nobody abused anybody or called anybody names. Okay, I called her names, but good names. I used to call her by the names of our unborn children. But I did not put the blame on her. I took responsibility. I didn’t also look for a witch to blame. I guess if I looked hard enough, I could find one in her family or even in mine. We just kept serving the Lord, knowing that He would make all things beautiful in His time.

When all hopes were gone, God came through for us. By the time my wife got pregnant, she had stopped seeing her period for four years. A kindhearted doctor sat her down one day and told her to accept the fact that she would never be pregnant again. But God overruled medical science. And He did it in a dramatic way. Now we have three wonderful children: Lovely, Awesome and Gladsome.

What lessons did you learn from that episode?

The first and most important is that with God all things are possible. Another lesson I learnt is that there is no challenge a couple cannot handle and no pain they cannot bear, if husband and wife stick together. I think it’s particularly unbearable for a woman when the husband becomes a judge and subjects his wife to all manner of ridicule and humiliation. Some husbands put the blame only on the wife, even when they themselves have issues to deal with. I also learnt that you can live a happy life through your years of waiting. Don’t put your life on hold because you don’t yet have children. Keep living your life and pursuing your dream. At the end, your success and fulfillment in life will not be measured by how many children you have, but by how well you have fulfilled your life’s purpose.