By Emmanuel Ojo
The founder and Senior Pastor of Kingsway International Christian Centre, Matthew Ashimolowo, says the church, through its Christ Compassion to the Rural World Foundation, is set for a six-day crusade in the Ikorodu area of Lagos.
He said the church, during the crusade holding between November 6 and 11, will offer free surgeries to between 200 and 300 patients, while drugs worth N70m will be dispensed.
Apart from these, the clergyman said his church had also prepared loads of relief materials to be distributed to residents during the mega crusade.
Ashimolowo disclosed this on Tuesday when he paid a courtesy visit to Punch Place, the headquarters of Punch Nigeria Limited at Magboro, Ogun State.
He said, “The crusade is in five parts. There are those who would never find their health or healing, so, we would organise 200 to 300 outpatient surgeries in the space of six days. Further to this, there has to be a pre-surgical screening, which was announced across media platforms. Yesterday, being the first day, 414 people showed up. Today, the video showed that there might be about 1,000 people that would show up. We also have to pay for the registration of the people into the Lagos State computer system because the people have to be registered into the e-registration of the hospital so that when we finish and they come back as outpatients, they would be on the system. They will start the surgeries by 8 am and it will last till 8pm.”
He said during the third part of the crusade, “We will be distributing relief materials to people. We’ll be giving 75,000 clothes of which 15,000 is new Ankara for women and all the ladies. We’ll be giving 50,000 packs of 1kg of rice, a pack of beans to 50,000 persons, pack of garri to 50,000. 10,000 bottles of oil, 10,000 buckets, 24,000 exercise books for children, 30,000 bars of soap to people and 10,000 packs of salt and there may be other things in the list that I cannot remember.”
He added that “The fourth thing is a specialised pastors’ seminar on Thursday and Friday so that we empower the pastors there and challenge them to rise and become the best they can be to serve their community and we will have over 2,000 pastors. I will be giving the pastors 2,000 specialised bibles that I have published. I work with Cambridge University Press and produced a prayer bible that has 15,000 prayer points inside. I will be giving them 5,000 of my books. I have written 110 books, so, I’ll be giving 5,000 of those books and will be giving symbolically, 151 public address systems to village evangelists.”
For the fifth part on Saturday, November 11, he said, “From 6 am to 6 pm, we will be lining up 100 doctors, 100 pharmacists, laboratory technologists, opticians, optometrists and other doctors. They are bringing in medicines worth over N70m. Also, 5,000 glasses will be given, out of which 3,000 are reading glasses and 2,000 are frames.”
Talking about the role of clerics in national politics, Ashimolowo said it was best for pastors to keep their political leaning to themselves in order not to create division among church members who support different political parties.
