Lagos CAN Chairman Apostle Alexander Bamgbola: I Was A Wizard, Witch..How I Joined The Occult World

Lagos CAN Chairman Apostle Alexander Bamgbola: I Was A Wizard, Powerful Witch..How I Joined The Occult World

By Sunday Oguntola,  The Nation

The Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Lagos chapter, Apostle Alexander Bamgbola spoke with Sunday Oguntola on his journey to the occult world and intriguing lessons he came away with.

See Excerpts:

How did you find yourself in the occult?

I grew up in a Muslim family but my parents made a mistake to send me to Christian school. I went to an Anglican school for primary education and then Baptist High school where I received the Lord secretly. I lived my life secretly.

I lived that life until I finished my school. In those days, you either work to any government institution to pick up a job in Electricity Company of Nigeria, which is now Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) or Ports Authority. But I made up my mind I was not going to work in the government establishments.

Before I finished schooling, I made up my mind I would only work in a bank. While in the High School, I would always dress up like I worked in the bank. So all my contemporaries started working in December immediately after our WAEC. It used to be automatic in those days. You didn’t have to sweat to get jobs.

But I didn’t have a job. By January and February, I was still jobless. I was living in Lagos with my uncle, a native doctor. He was a very eminent native doctor on Lagos Island. By April, still no job. And my friends were already living in rented apartments, drinking and womanising.

By the end of April, my uncle called me. He asked if something was wrong with me. How come others had jobs but I was unemployed. I used to be active in First Baptist Lagos on Broad Street. I told my uncle I was only interested in working in a bank but none of the six banks I applied to have replied.

He said well if that’s what you want, you should have told me. All I need to do is give you some little thing. A Baptist boy, I said no. About a week later, he called and did some incisions on my head and barely ten days later, I got an invitation for interview in Barclays Bank.

What do you think a young man would do considering the timing?

That marked the beginning of my involvement in the occult. I got the job with Barclays Bank. I worked in Barclays Bank for five year and two months. When I got to the bank, I saw how people made money.

Before I left for America, I had become an ogbologo to extent that my late friend, Adesanya, took me to a place in Ota, Ogun State where they gave me more powers. When I was leaving for the USA for studies, my suitcase was 90 per cent full of juju.

And they didn’t detect?

They don’t care. Those days, there was no Customs like this but I learnt my lesson. Another late friend, Oshodi, was with me enjoying then in Chicago. We went to look for a very beautiful flat in northern side of Chicago whereas Nigerians were used to being in the south-south.

One day, FBI came to arrest Oshodi because he had insurance issue. That was in 1971 and I was the only one in the house in the morning. We were on the 13th floor of the 42- storey building. They pressed the bell but I refused to open. They threatened to break in to the apartment. I rushed to my purse loaded with juju and started incantation but nothing worked.

I was even ready to jump from the 13th floor. Well, they opened the door, put handcuffs on me and took me to their office. They saw my valid visa, school fees paid and passport and wondered why I refused to open the door.

That night, Oshodi came voluntarily because he had married. We spent the night in the light jail and were released the following morning. So I found out my juju will not work in America. I abandoned it to focus on work hard.

That was the first phase. God blessed me so well in my university. I joined the American bank and abandoned juju. I started going to church. When I came back, I came back as an expatriate. The bank had already gotten my house in March in 1979 but I didn’t come back until October.

So, how did you get to the occult?

In 1982, I had a disaster. I was sick to the point of death. It was actually an attack. I woke up in my dream and saw myself dead in a stretcher in the hall way of a hospital. As an expatriate, the bank flew me back to Houston.

But they found nothing wrong with me after series of tests. So I knew it was spiritual. My friend, who was a little older, told me he had always been saying I needed fortification to survive in Nigeria. He was in the occult and led me there.

I joined over 30 occult groups within and outside the country. I joined the one in Benin, the Islamic occult, every occult and became heavily involved in the occult. Meanwhile, my ambition then was to become governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

…And you believed you won’t become the governor of CBN without being in the occult?

Yes. Twice, I was close to becoming CBN governor. I had so many friends in the military. Many of them were in the occult too. One of them became Head of States and promised twice to make me CBN governor. But it didn’t work until 1979.

In 1987, we tried it again but it wasn’t possible. This time, I was with my spiritualists in the occult. They told me it would be done and I believed them and abandoned the church.

It got to a point I had to become a wizard in the occult and there are sixteen powers of wizardry. You take it level by level. I got to the eleventh point, receiving something like a small gourd rubbed on your body and no doctor can find it, never.

I received eleven powers and I told them I was not feeling the power and they all agreed to give me the ultimate, which is witchcraft. We always accuse women of being witches but the real witches are men. So I became a witch. If you look at my head, you would find a spot where they made over 1,000 incisions in 1985.

I was then acting Managing Director of my bank and we were sorting out things. I received the power of witchcraft in February/March. The spot in my head never healed. It even smelled at a point. I started wearing natives. I was wearing agbada so that I could cover the volume of juju around my body.

Suits could no longer cover them. I had to use agbada and the most expensive perfume was what you would find on my body because I could perceive the smell of the head myself. For eleven months, this head smelled. But I became born again in 1989.

How did you leave the occult?

I had to leave because Jesus took me out from there. I had 13 personal cars, mostly Mercedes series. I loved Mercedes series, 200, 300, SE 300 and 500 American cars. The occult life continued until when the Lord was ready for me. Nobody would talk to me about it. I would just smile.

If I would go to church programme, probably I would go once in two years. I would remove a lot of juju on my body, hide them in the car and still keep the most potent ones because there could be emergency even in the church. But when God was ready for me, Jesus would appear to me.

I could be in the office, talking to my clients, opening my files and the face would just change. If I lied down and faced the ceiling, Jesus will just be smiling at me. That took about four days- the longest numbers of days I spent on earth.

Jesus kept appearing to me. All the generals and ministers were meeting in my house every night for party. My wife came up during the four-day troubles and I had to open up to her.

The woman laughed and said ‘I have been telling you Alex, you will not only see Jesus, you will wine and dine with Jesus.’ I was so upset. I thought the woman will be sympathetic.

She was already a Christian?

Yes, she was. She had been praying, weeping for ten years for my soul. She and my cousin would pray together for nine hours, weeping and crying for salvation of my soul.

She knew about your involvement in occult?

Yes, she knew. There was a section in the house where I have over 150 sponges to take bath. I had no peace in those four days. Something told me to go to Bethel Church. I was praying that Sunday would come. I just wanted to go to church. That Sunday, I sneaked into the church. I sat at the back.

Rev Oduyemi just fished me out. He took me from there and put me right in the front. As he ministered, he gave the altar call. Before he finished, I had answered altar call. He laid hands on me and I felt over 1,000 thousand tons of ships had been removed from my head.

Before then, I was almost a medical doctor to myself. I had hypertension, chronic hypertension, no sleep at night, no rest and then women with the military friends with drinks. In the day, you see me in suit, appearing as the finest banker in the town. But in the night, I was something else.

The day I gave my life to Christ, every sickness vanished. I used to have blood pressure and all that. That day, I noticed nothing. I went to the doctor and became normal. My friends didn’t believe it. It took them years to believe me because I was the man in charge of music for my military group consisting of governors across the states involved in daily partying.

Were there attempts by the occult members to draw you back?

Not even drawing me back but killing me. I would just wake up on my bed and see letters. Real letters dropped. But I knew their activities before. They gave me seven-day ultimatum and arranged accidents to kill me.

I was coming to Lagos from Ibadan expressway sometimes ago when the tire burst but nothing happened. I was crossing from my house, using Glover Street when a commercial bus appeared from nowhere. It threw me and my car to other side of the main road because they gave me deadlines of death.

All those years they were threatening you, were you afraid?

No, never.

Why?

I just knew I had touched the real thing. The Lord had become my shield and buckler. I just believed nothing could happen to me. When I knew the power of God is real. I knew too many of the secrets. I tried to kill my wife when I didn’t make to become the CBN governor. They were telling me that she was the one blocking it.

In the two years I spent in the occult, no one ever came and say it didn’t happen. But in her case, it didn’t happen. With all the juju, they put blood on her night dress. I knew she would wear one. I went out and drove back around 5:30am, expecting to find her dead.

But as I moved in, the security men said nothing. I went in and heard her voice, praying. I called my friend and I said ‘this woman is not dead o’. My friend said it is not possible. He took his car, drove to Ikoyi by 7 am to confirm himself. That was when it became clear to me that some people cannot be killed.