By Eric Elezuo
Many see him as controversial, while a great many others see him as a known philanthropist. However, the obvious fact remains that Nigeria-born, England based pastor, Tobi Adegboyega, is busy transforming young and youthful lives into the wonders they were created to be, using his NXTION, formally known Salvation Proclaimers Anointed Church (SPAC Nation), before June 2020, a Christian denomination worship centre in East London.
Situated at The Atrium on 124 Cheshire St, London, before the UK authorities reportedly ordered its shutdown, NXNATION was established to rekindle hope in the lost and about to be lost lives, especially among black youths. This, Pastor Tobi, as he fondly called, has been doing even as he is celebrating 44 years of impactful living.
According to information ontained from the church’s site, NXTION has been “a faith based organisation that is committed in seeing the lives of young people being transformed. A generation whereby many young people have been dejected, abused and simply overlooked, SPAC NATION merely offers an alternative, whilst changing the narrative of this generation one step at a time.
“Taking a hands-on-approach, SPAC NATION offers 1:1 mentorship/key work sessions, counselling and guidance through the means of lifestyle evangelism’’. A concept that is not common within today’s society, SPAC NATION breaks the mould…”
In a research conducted by BBC in 2019, it was observed that Adegboyega, who is said to be the cousin of Britain based popular actor, John Boyega, in collaboration with five other pastors (the generals) working with him, has helped many young people to lay down their arms and take up the bible as well as other worthy and rewarding businesses for a greater and better future, and of course many testimonies abound. Each of the pastors runs one of five churches across the capital.
Also known as PT (Pastor Tobi) by adherents, the young up and mobile Nigerian pastor is always the cynosure of all eyes during his services, which more than anything, takes the shape of a celebration, and the message is principally ‘prosperity gospel’ – a belief that God rewards his followers with material wealth – and the more they give, the more they will be rewarded.
Like every stylish preacher, Adegboyega attracts condemnation from most people who do not know how his church is run, and others who may have been fed with wrong accounts. But he affirmed that he has not taken anybody’s or church’s money, his flashy lifestyle notwithstanding.
PT’s denials came in the wake of claims by young followers that they have been left in thousands of pounds of debt, calling to question the church’s inner workings. But PT explains, bringing to the fore the reasons the church and its pastors sort of appear ostentatious:
“We realised young people need help. That help may be getting into college, or getting out of a gang.
“I realised that to connect with the generation you have to look like them.
“What are they looking for? Why are they attracted to drill rap? They want the shoes, and the clothes.
“We thought we’re going to do the same thing, and wear what they wear, then we’ll pass on the right message.
“I can easily pull up in a nice car among secondary school kids who may be about to start selling drugs. They ask what I do and I get them engaged.
“Once I get their attention I can pass on the right message, and tell them they’ll make money by changing their lives. We had to attract them.”
Adegboyega, himself, a pastor’s son and trained lawyer, has truly exhibited charisma in everything he has been engaged in, especially in the way he has been getting the young ones to jettison a life of crime and gangsterism to embrace the loving Word of God and genuine business. He is far from the typical everyday minister.
He said:
“SPAC is a very different kind of church. It’s not your typical church.
“We tell them there’s something better, whether that’s a start-up business, or education – if they weren’t part of our church many would be in prison, or dead.”
The wealth on display, apparently is also a cause for concern, given the vulnerability of many youngsters looking for a better way of life. Tobi believes that instead of allowing the youngsters seek good life through crime, it were better they are introduced to Christ, using all the trappings of the good life they envisaged.
In his church are neatly arranged rows of weapons, mostly knives, which have been surrendered by repented gangsters and small time criminals in what appears like a gangster movie.
While the church denies all allegations, vulnerable teens have opined that extortion reign supreme in the church in as much BBC reporter said she saw otherwise ‘when I spent a Sunday there’.
Tobi’s SPAC is another fortress with hefty looking and well dressed security men in their numbers, syrveying and parading the length and breath of the church. The measure, the church explains, is necessary because of the likelihood of persons coming in with weapons.
“We have very strong security measures in place. My first duty is to make everyone feel safe. The security we have, they are also from that background, so they know to sit certain people in separate areas.
“We’ve had arguments and near clashes but no one’s been beaten up because of our security.
“We have briefings every week. The head of our security has served in the military and one is an ex-policeman. We don’t do searches but we’re always keeping an eye out.
“People do bring weapons, but most do it to submit it to the church.”
He insisted that people come into the church with weapons only to surrender them. This sometimes is a consequence of appeals and admonitions overtime. He added that at sometime, guns were recovered as well as drugs.
“We’ve had guns once in a while. We’ve had a guy hand in four guns. He is still one of the leaders in church now. He said he wouldn’t go to the corner shop without a gun because he was so afraid people wanted to get him.”
Speaking further on recovered weapons, he said: “Most of these look like they’ve been taken from the kitchen, taken by young people who want to be able to protect themselves. Sometimes we’ve had rambos and samurai swords – professional knives, bought on the internet.”
Pastor Tobi Adegboyega summarised his destiny thus:
I grew up in the church, preached my first message in church at the age of 8 but, I grew to get into other things and I looked for solace and direction in drugs, education etc.
I felt the Lord calling me back at the age of 25 years but it wasn’t going to be into the church like I had known it. I had followed the Evangelical, Pentecostal and Orthodox “movements” all my life but I knew there was something more.
I am sent to a disenfranchised group of people. A new generation of young people, prospering on fire for God but mostly coming from difficult backgrounds.
Some years ago, we started to speak to this set of people about three of them to begin with, now these young men and women have increased to over 2000 people, in each service. Currently we operate with over 200 ordained ministers and pastors and we operate about 17 community units across London.
According to the BBC, nothing like this has ever been seen before. Young people coming to surrender to Christ and gang leaders and members coming to church to give up their weapons, drugs etc on the altar.
Financial times and many other television channels in the UK have recorded and reported what God is doing. We have created over 40 businesses as we create alternative lifestyles for young people in politics, business, finance, education etc.
In an exclusive interview with The Boss a few years ago, Pastor Tobi stated the obvious about his life. See excerpts:
Why did you you step down as head of SPAC Nation?
I did that because, I did not want to be like those elders or black politicians who in their lifetimes do not hand over but allow death to take them away. I felt it was right and I knew that those who have been with me have come of age. I believed they had to be given the chance to be leaders.
That is number 1. Number two, we have expanded so much that I needed them to take up leadership that is closer to their age. So, we needed the family circle to continue. Those where the major reasons.
So what is your new role in the church now?
I oversee the work of the church globally. I am in charge of the expansion of the work. We are presently in 168 locations worldwide so it is difficult for me to continue to pastor just one church in London city, especially since I have done it for sixteen years, day in, day out.
I pastor the church globally and also train the leaders. We have over 300 leaders just in London alone. My job is to gather those 300 and give them constant training, an overview of their duties and the building of families in a church setting.
A lot of people do not understand how SPAC Nation works. What is the format? You know it is not a regular church and people quarrel with what they don’t understand?
Before I explain the format, people must understand that we are a response to something. SPAC Nation birthed as a response to something that affected young people.
There were so many young people who were going astray; who were getting into all kinds of fraud and things like that.
I grew up in the church and I know what it was like as a youth to be disconnected from the church because most young people will say church was boring.
It does not create jobs for them, it doesn’t give them any hope in the future, other than just spirituality and the hope that God will do something in their lives in the future, which may not be. Our format in a nutshell is that we are consistently responding to the situation of these youths and we have created a path for their prosperity.
Therefore, we responded to that situation first from Queen’s Road, Peckham. Queen’s Road at the time was very notorious, police couldn’t deal with it. I started to gather young people in that area until the crime rate reduced.
The efficient way we reduced crime led us to the structure. It was the same way we reduced crime in Peckham, that we reduced crime in Benton and Croydon.
I knew that if young people can find hope, practical hope, then crime will reduce in those areas. Our format in a nutshell is that we are consistently responding to the situation of these youths, and we have created a path for their prosperity.
You bring few young people together, some of them had just come out of jail, the reoffending rate in London is the highest in the entire western world. So, it means that when they come out of jail, they would keep going back again and again, so we had to find a way to break that circle.
We had to reduce or break that by giving them businesses by coming together as a community.
I started by borrowing money for the top three business ideas of our people here. I gave it to them, and they invested in business, when they did that, they did not go back into crime.
We got those people out of crime, and we repeated that template over and over again in the past sixteen years.
In the beginning, I borrowed 1,000 pounds or 2000 pounds but now, they have grown it to millions of pounds. The pastor I handed over to; I started his business; it is called Zuriel UK; it is a recruitment business, he built that from whatever amount we started with at the time, now it is worth millions. The company was featured by Financial Times in 2017.
They did a piece titled, “Streetwise Approach For young people” or something like that. The three people who started with me as part of the SPAC Nation family then included one politician that we raised, the Zuriel founder and another major gang leader that had a Chauffeuring company.
The format is that we have many Senior Pastors, we have many houses in the UK, the houses are Economic Development Centres.
I give you an example, we have a house called the House of Medics. It is led by a lady Surgeon who graduated First Class in the UK. That House is to encourage young people that are interested in the medical field to get mentored.
Like I said, we came as a response to something. We have girls who got pregnant at 14, 15; their boyfriends would have been or is in jail. So we found out that instead of just preaching to these kinds of people alone, which is what the regular churches do, we create alternatives for them.
If they say they want to be medical doctors or any part of the medical field, we lead them to the House of Medics. There, they see people who look like them, they are black, the are Africans; Nigerians, Congolese, they see them active, working in the church and also studying. They will realize that if these people’s lives can change, theirs can too.
Essentially, what you do is give hope to people who are in a state of hopelessness?
Absolutely. In practical terms that is what we do. Churches too move people from hopelessness to hope, they preach and pray. But what we do is apart from the praying and preaching, we have created systems that can practically launch and lead them to a different path.
I also have to add that the Home Office has asked us for our format and we have given them, they seem willing to adopt it. I have spoken at Number 10. From the Prime Minister, to senior officials, I have discussed what we do.
A whole documentary was done about our strategy on Sky TV and it is online, it is public. I was educating them about the House Structure. The Metropolitan Police, Scotland Yard, have led delegations to our church to learn the format for many many weeks.
So ours is a format that is tested and trusted and it has been on for sixteen years and counting.
From what you have said, SPAC Nation has indeed achieved laudable feats. How come, Pastor Tobi Adegboyega is trailed by so much controversies?
What I have done in this city, there is no single black person that has ever done it. All the offices here, they would always say there is no one person that is able to gather all these youths like I have done. The police used to say that everybody we want to talk to are with you.
I will say that I am black in a very difficult country. I am not naïve to think that good works will always lead to good accolades. There were over 1000 youths in Chelsea yesterday (November 11, 2021) for my birthday. All the major people in this country were there. But I also understand that every movement has controversies.
Everything that is unusual is controversial. We have been doing our work for years but it was 2016 that we grew very exponentially and the work became very obvious with all the barrage of accusations and rumours.
BBC came and did 5 to 6 positive documentaries on SPAC Nation, then they decided to do one negative one.
All those who took part in the first five wrote to the BBC when they discovered their motive that they were not going to part of this one, but BBC decided to do it all the same.
And of course, as humans, we then had some people from the church who said this and that happened. We have been very open, we have been investigated many times and since that 2017 not one charge, not one allegation proven. Not one.
And I am sure you know how the British media operates, not one person has been charged for any wrongdoing. So these are just rumours, we are not perfect but if it was a white person’s charity, gathering thousands of youths and turning their lives around, they would not be treated this way.
Are you saying there is a tinge of racism in the allegations and accusations that has been levelled against you and SPAC Nation? That you are being hounded because you are black?
Oh yes! Definitely. There is no question about that. We have saved the British government 210 million Pounds since 2019. We have given the government ammunitions and weapons, knives, guns etc (160). We have situations where people will not surrender their guns unless I am there.
The Police would have to call me before they will surrender. That is a lot of power. I have announced at a rally where we had thousands of young people that things will come against us.
I study movements, I have studied movements all my life, there is no way in the world that you are going to do what we are doing in a strange country that is not your country of birth and not have things come up against or thrown at you.
There was a lady who used to live with me and she got pregnant at the age of 15, you can imagine how heartbroken she was. She was able to overcome that situation, and in 2019, we encouraged her to take to politics and she later decided to stand for an election.
When she went for the office in Croydon. I went with her to the Conservative Party Convention, and I was sitting right behind Boris Johnson, the video is online. The Labour Party then believed that I was Conservative and they started all the rumours.
The Labour politician put it clearly, that he felt I wanted to expand our evangelical zeal in Croydon. Many people from his party did not support his position and I told him.
Look, Labour Party members have been to the SPAC Nation, Conservative Party members have been to the SPAC Nation and other parties too, apart from the current one, there is no serious candidate aspiring for Mayor of London that has not been to the SPAC Nation.
We usually give the opportunity to everybody but he is the one that led the charge against me and against the Nation as we call ourselves because he thinks I want to get involved in politics.
Is it the MP Steve Reed that you are referring to?
Yes.
Ok, what of the stories that you Pastor Tobi are hypnotizing these youths? What medicine are you using on them?
I am not using any medicine. It looks strange to them and they are all surprised at how far we have come because they just cannot connect with these young people.
And I can tell you why they can’t. I will start with our churches. They cannot connect with them because they do not care. When you have a church filled with young people there is no money.
So what church will spend its time on young people that can’t bring money, young people that look like they have no future.
Secondly, I went to Number 10 and we had a talk about helping young people and reducing crime. When I walked out of the door of Number 10, I was with three Special Advisers for Theresa May and one Adviser of Boris Johnson, this again is online, I realized in the course of that talk that many do not understand that before you can change a person’s life you have to connect with that person.
What I have is that I can connect with the youths. If you can connect with someone, he or she will love you. I have just been plain.
All my life in the UK, even when I was a kitchen porter here in London, washing plates and sleeping on the floor, young people have always flocked around me because of how I relate with them.
These same young people who were on the floor, some of them have graduated First Class in Computer Engineering, some of them have become millionaires, so why would they not love me?
I live my life with them. If you can be open and plain with people, especially young people, they will love you.
At the moment I live in my house with about 20 people. If you are with them you will understand them, you will connect. That is what we have done, young people figure things out quickly, they are rebels naturally.
I love young people and I know how to connect with them. Maybe that is my medicine.
People say your lifestyle is ostentatious, that you are lavish and flashy, you ride expensive sports cars etc. How did you go from washing plates to riding a Lamborghini and living like a super star?
Let me first explain to you the philosophy behind it all. Rappers rap about all kinds of things, especially in UK and US. There is a genre of music here called Drill, which talks about killing people, doing all kinds of terrible things and a lot of crime is incited through the music.
These guys drive the best cars, they are flashy and people follow them because of these things, so we thought we should do what they do and even be better, while also spreading the right message. So instead of people trooping to them, they will come to us.
Have you seen the marlian movement in Nigeria?
It is huge
Exactly, they have their own lifestyle. But the church, we lock our selves in the room, we would not reckon with them. I know many Pastor-friends in Nigeria, who have Bentleys and Rolls Royces, but hide them. I cannot do that.
We were lucky early enough to understand the language of these youths, whatever people criticize, I do not care, I go for it if it fits my purpose.
Let me tell you, before 2016, we started investing in Crypto currency, again as a result of my association with these youths, everybody was laughing at us. I said guys lets focus, at the end, we ended up taking so many people off the streets, and set them up in business with what was made from that investment. Now we have our own internal loan system that I launched yesterday.
Anyone that wants to start a business, we would give a loan without any interest. We are doing this with Knightshield which is one of the businesses started by one of the Pastors.
The ostentatious lifestyle like you call it is all about me, but trust me, I am not materialistic. I have never cared about material things.
There are people around me that we have raised over the years, I promote stuff for people, all the luxury items for example. I have never bought a car.
Really, this is shocking to hear?
That is the truth. I have never bought a car and I have never owned a car, I don’t have a car, that should be on record. But people will see you with cars and speculate. There are people in the Nation family who own these things.
Cuts: So all those Porsche, Lamborghini, and others that you cruise around town are gifts?
No they are not gifts. They are owned by businesses or people in the church. If I drive them, I speak about them or their businesses and people will patronize them, that is what has been happening.
For example, the guy who designs for Louis Vuitton, he sends me stuff all the time and say “just wear it” and talk about it.
Earlier you said you don’t have a car, how does a man of your status move around?
Like I said earlier, I have got people. I want to prove it to the world that when you have done things for people, helped people, you will have no problem. I don’t have a house anywhere else in the world except the UK. And that is the house I said I live with about 20 people, but when I get to anywhere in the world, I have people who are ready to offer all kinds of things to make me comfortable.
I don’t leave my house and go all about. If I wake up today and say I want 10 Louis Vuitton shoes, I will get 150, but I don’t need it because I have more than enough. That is my formula.
Happy 44th birthday dear Pastor Tobi!
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