The story of the man who loved prison continues…
The First Incident
“I returned to UK for my graduation ceremony after completing my Masters. Immediately after I graduated with a first class in architecture, I tried to settle down in London and get a job. That was when this spirit first manifested. I was in my room when suddenly I lost control of my body. I found myself going into my neighbour’s house, opening the door with a different key and sitting down in the house there until the owner came in. When the man saw me in the house, he began to shout. He had to call the cops who immediately came to arrest me. When I came to my senses, I tried to explain but it wasn’t any good – what was I explaining when he locked his door and came back to find a stranger in the house. They took me to court and I was thrown behind bars, remanded into prison custody in London, UK.
“I spent one year and six months in a London prison. During my time there, they would come to interrogate me to know my ability. They brought psychologists to monitor me to know if what I did was normal or if there was something mentally wrong with me. They saw that my mind was okay and began questioning themselves – what actually made me do such things. I was the best behaved in the prison and the wardens soon made me the head of all the inmates in the prison. Because of that, they began to save some money for me and wrote many letters to the courts to tell them of my good behaviour. Eventually, I was called back and the case was struck out based on the report the wardens gave that I was the best behaved and that they had found nothing wrong with me. My auntie was informed and they handed me over to her. She put me on a plane and forcefully took me back to Nigeria.
The Spirit Strikes In Shell
“When I came back to Nigeria, I returned to my local community in Rivers State. I got engaged with a girl and we were married on the 12th December 1999. But my marriage didn’t last because this spirit didn’t want anyone to come close to me. I had told her everything that happened to me and she really wanted to help me out. But the law was – if you tried to help me out, you lost your life for my sake. She tried and paid the price. I was working in Shell then in a good job as a supervisor but all of a sudden this thing happened again. One night, I went to the hidden room where they kept all the money to pay the workers at the end of the month and opened the door with an unknown key. It caused a riot as workers came in, stole the money and fled. I remained in the room while everyone ran away with the money. The security met me in the room sitting down with the money gone and began beating me. It was only in that moment that I regained consciousness but already it was too late. I was the only one caught and had to face the penalty because it was over N10 million that was stolen.
“Each time I was caught, I would be found with a bunch of keys that would incriminate me. Because once they show such evidence, there was nothing I would say to convince them. I had no lawyer to stand for me. My people were not there – everybody deserted me because of this, as the case was reported throughout the community. My wife could not do anything. So, I had to go back to prison again in Nigeria. Some months later my wife became very sick because of the trauma and disgrace, everybody talking about me and insulting her, telling her, “Your husband is a criminal, a thief”. I was in prison when she died and was buried. I didn’t know. I never knew what happened. She died of a heart attack – she was so depressed. Heartbreak killed her because she loved me so much and seeing all this shame upon her, she gave up. She was only 26 years old. That was how I lost her, though she bore me one son. My son does not know me because I have never been there for him at all. If he sees me for a day, the next week I will be back in prison. He never showed the love of an offspring for his father – he’s always with other people. Then, he was staying with my mother. The day of my wedding was the first day I knew my biological mother.
A Week On The Streets
“Whenever I came out from prison, I had nowhere to go. I had to go back to the streets – where the devil wanted me to be. You can imagine somebody that was living abroad now mingling with hoodlums and gangsters, sleeping outside in the streets and under the bridges of Lagos. I had to involve myself with some gangs and do what they did just to have something to eat. I took drugs and smoked weed and other stuff just to have shelter and try to continue my life. But after just a week out of prison the spirit entered me and I was found sitting in someone’s house again, holding a key. When that spirit came upon me, I was not actually able to control myself. The thing controlled me; it overwhelmed me. Its powers were greater and it overwhelmed my body. It took control of my whole being. Whatever it had been sent to do, that’s what I did until I was caught in the act and beaten. Then it would go out of me and I would come back to my normal sense. By then it would be too late for me to explain because already I was caught in the act. So, I would receive a beating and would be sent back to prison innocently. That had been the story of my life for 15 years. I have been to prison eight times, each for a period of one year and six months. Each time the judge released me, within a week or month of being outside, I would find myself back there again.
Uncontrollable
“I could be in the midst of people, even talking and laughing with them when suddenly you would just see me jack up. Something would happen to me. I would be gone; I would not be there again. Even if you called me, I wouldn’t respond. I would go straight to where the spirit led me to. Even if you tapped me and asked, “Where are you going?” I wouldn’t respond. I would keep going until I was caught. I was not conscious of any of my actions in those moments. When that spirit came upon me, I would be totally controlled by it – I had no say of my own or power to resist it. It controlled me and took me to wherever it led me. I would just see myself moving in the particular direction that it led me to. I would see myself opening a door, going in and sitting down. And whenever that spirit took me, it would make sure that the owner of the building was already close so that within two to five minutes of my being in that house, the owner would come in.
“When he would see me and shout on me, I wouldn’t say a word. I would just look at him like a zombie. “What are you doing in my house!?” I would just look at him until he would begin to raise an alarm and people would come and beat me. That was when it would come out and I would regain my senses. Of course, by then he would not listen to whatever I tried to explain. I would start crying, “Please, help me. I don’t know how I came here.” But the more I cried, the more they beat and disgraced me. “You are a criminal. What kind of thug is this? How will you say you don’t know how you came in? Is that not the key you are holding?” And I was always caught with the key in my hand. I would just see myself picking keys and knowing how to open doors. I was very familiar with keys when the spirit came into me. If I was walking and I saw a key on the floor, I would see myself picking it up. So, before I knew it, I would be back at the station and from the station, back to prison again. I could be in the station for like three months – nobody would come to see me. I was just left alone.
Spiritual Attack
“Whenever I was in the police cell, I would become the head and would take care of the inmates there. They liked me because I was good-hearted. I bought disinfectant and made sure the place was clean and I befriended the police officers and asked them to get new blankets for us. When many of them were out on bail, they would come and buy things for me. But everyone refused to bail me out because they were scared. Anyone who tried to take me out would get himself in trouble again. All they wanted to do was buy things for me and encourage me to keep going. When I would be there for a couple of months, they would take me to the court. The court would look at me and say, “You again; the same case”. And the magistrate would ask, “What kind of attack is this?” He said that this thing was beyond human comprehension, that it’s spiritual. Because each time I came to the court, it would be the same case, the same occurrence, the same penalty. It was obvious that this thing was really spiritual. But due to the law, I had to go back to the prison because nobody was there to come and bail me out. So, I had to go back to the prison.
Notoriety In Society
“This thing really made me notorious and any time I was released from prison, people were scared of me. If anything happened where I was living, whether it’s me or not, they pointed fingers at me. Sometimes I would go to prison innocently for something I did not even know about. If a crime occurred some place near me, since I was around, they would say that it was me. And before I knew it, the police had come to take me. And there was no way I could say it was not me because I had other similar cases.
“Besides, I didn’t argue with them because I loved the prison. Whenever I was released, I would be scared. I didn’t even want to go. Each time the judge acquitted me, I would tell him that I really loved where I was staying, that there was no need for them take me out. I knew that once I was out, I would come back again in another week. The judge knew that there was really something wrong with me because a normal person would be happy to be released from prison but I was sad to be released from prison. I would even cry that I wanted to go back to the prison because I didn’t have a home outside. I was a stranger and outcast in my community.
At Home In Harsh Conditions
“Prison conditions in Nigeria are bad, very bad. The environment is foul and the water is dirty. The food we receive is beans and rice but the beans are half-cooked with a lot of insects and there is a lot of sand in the rice. I wouldn’t call it a meal – I call it disease. But yet, I still loved the prison because each time I would go there, it was the only home I had. Sometimes I could get clean water because I was friendly with the wardens. If you were being remanded in prison custody, you remained in your hall locked up all day; you didn’t do anything. If you were awaiting trial, you didn’t have any rights. Some people there had waited for eight or 10 years without being tried, especially robbers and murderers. Some spend their whole life without being tried. They do nothing – wasting precious time. A small hall contains a lot of people – 180 inmates in a small room in serious heat, stuck together like sardines. You don’t have any space. People will be choking. We slept on the bare floor with no mattress.
“Whenever I came into prison, within a week I was always made the head of my hall because of my good behaviour and kindness. I was able to go to the prison wardens and ask for blankets to put on the floor because people were dying of infection. Sometimes when rain fell, it came straight to the hall and you would have to sleep in the water. Some sleep stood and had swollen legs because of standing all day and night. Some because of sleeping on the wet ground got pneumonia and died. With that, I had to create awareness to the wardens; that was one thing I did in the prison that everyone remembered me for. I was the one that brought about them bringing blankets into the prison to put on the floor. Because in a day, you could see six to seven people die before your eyes. If the person died in the night, you had to sleep with the dead body until morning. No matter how loudly you banged the door, nobody would come to open because they felt that maybe it was a set-up for you to escape. In the morning, they would come and drag the bodies out and take them to the mortuary. I’ve carried many bodies out of my cell. Sometimes you would be lying down and by the time you woke up, your neighbour would be dead. And many people had skin disease and infections because of the conditions. But in all my years in prison, this never happened to me. I didn’t have a single skin infection because then, it was my home.
Suicidal Tendencies
“Whenever I was released, the wardens knew that I was definitely going to come back. They would tell me, “Mr Brown, I know you are going out there but we will still welcome you back here”. And in one or two weeks, I would be back. I have been to prison eight times in life and wasted all my years – at least half of my life in the prison. The aim of the spirit was to lead me to suicide. There were times in prison when I nearly took my life because I felt very rejected. I saw that people would visit even the worst criminals but me, nobody came to see me. Nobody even cared; nobody asked of me. It was so painful when you saw people coming to visit somebody that actually committed this crime but you that did not do it intentionally, nobody came to see you. I felt mentally disturbed. But whenever I felt like taking my life, something restrained me and my life would just go on like that.
Divine Arrangement
“The last time I came out of prison, I knew I needed somebody beside me. Because when this thing came on me, if somebody is around me, they could hold me down and bring me back to my senses. So, I met this girl in my community and told her everything about myself. Most people refused to come close to me because of the shame but after hearing my story, she insisted and said she was going to help me. There was a day she was watching Emmanuel TV and she saw the case of a boy called Emmanuel who was delivered of a similar spirit of stealing. Whenever I was out of prison, I never liked watching Emmanuel TV because the spirit in me would not allow me to. Each time I tried to sit and watch Emmanuel TV, the spirit pushed me out to do something else. But when she saw this case, she literally sat on top of me and forced me to watch.
“As I was watching, I felt a strange sensation within me. I saw hope; I saw a way out. But there were still many problems that tried to stop me from coming. There was a battle going on. The day I finally came here, I knew that God was actually going to change me because the victory had already been won for me to even come in the first place. I knew that was the time God had assigned for me to change. When I came into the church, the first service finished and I said I would not stand up from my seat to even go and drink water or eat. I said that I must stay there until I got my deliverance because I knew here was my final bus-stop. Thank God that the man of God came and actually prophesied about my case. What he said that day astounds me, even up to his moment. He dislodged my problem, right from the root. While other men of God just cut the branches and in a couple of days they grew back, this man of God touched my life tremendously by uprooting my problem from the source. When you uproot something, it is dead finally.
The Name Above All Names
“I stayed in the church for that entire week and in the following service, I shared my experiences with the congregation. Then the man of God Prophet T.B. Joshua asked me to shout the name of Jesus Christ. I’ve never had such an experience in my whole life. It was so awesome! I had never seen such bright light in my life. When I shouted the name of Jesus, I saw this light hitting my face. It was like the light that shone on Paul’s face on the way to Damascus. The light was so awesome and great and mighty that I couldn’t stand it. It overwhelmed my entire being. Before I knew it, I was down on the floor. I knew that God was at work. When this light came into me, that’s when I knew I was free because I felt light. I felt relieved. I felt as if there was a rebirth of a new life. I was being reborn. It’s like my life actually began the day I saw the light. I started seeing the reality of life. I started seeing the sweetness of my future, which the devil would have deprived me of getting.
“Since then, life has been so beautiful to me. It’s the most wonderful thing that has happened to me. I’ve lived my life so freely. My heart is light. I don’t think about my past any more. The burden has gone. I now see my real self, my real potential, my real value. I now know who I am. And I have great peace – peace that nobody could give me. I can now truly say, if the Son of God has set you free, you are free indeed! Since then, people who have rejected me for years have been calling. “When do we come to embrace you?” My family and community that called me a black sheep, who didn’t want to identify or have anything to do with me are now calling me. It’s nothing but God’s hands.
Advice Born Of Experience
“From my experiences in prison, I would say at least 75% of inmates there have similar cases like me. What brought them into the prison, they don’t know about it. If you ask them, they say, “I don’t know what brought me; I don’t know what came into me’. If you begin to interview them and see their life, you see they have a very pure heart; they don’t have criminal tendencies but something really drives them to do such things. So, my advice to the authorities is that they should look at such cases when they are brought to court. Sometimes they bring folks that are innocent – and the devil makes them accept what they are not. They are actually being convicted for what they are not. If the people in higher authorities would look into it and begin to take cognisance of the spiritual element in this, it will help a lot of folks from going into prison innocently. Such people need deliverance from an anointed man of God, not a life wasted behind bars.
“Also, my advice to young people – there is nothing too hard for God to do. If God could change me, a rejected son, how much more them? God is still interested in them. And God can and will change them from their situation. It’s only their determination. Progress and success lies upon the platform of determination. Unless a man is determined to change, change cannot come to light. And that’s the only force that has brought me to this change – determination. I was determined; I was tired of my situation and that’s why I experienced this tremendous change.
Final Words
“One thing I really want to say – I have spent my whole life in the darkness, half of my life in prison. I never knew this tremendous light that has come to me. And now that I have embraced it, I don’t want to stop here. I want to give my whole life to it and serve God. Let the few days I have here on earth here be worthy of Him. And also to my family, to my son and my children, I want them to look unto a good father, a responsible father that they could point to and be proud of tomorrow, one that they will grow up and defend in the future. I want to erase the bad record and begin to allow God’s light to take over and make me what I am. I just thank God. I want to serve Him with all of my heart. That is the only thing that will give me joy and fulfil my destiny – by serving Him with all of my heart.”
