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“I Used To Steal & Pick The Pockets At The Age Of 7 & 8” Evangelist Mike Bamiloye reveals on life @58
The president of the Mount Zion Drama Ministry, Evangelist mike bamiloye celebrated his birthday on April 13th and in his birthday message, the christian drama veteran wrote on how he as delivered by God as a thief when he was growing up after losing his mum at a very tender age.
According to him, the absence of a mother in his life led to his wayward lifestyle that he became a terror to everyone in the area.
He wrote:
“HIS GRACE HAS KEPT ME” – My Testimony
1 Samuel 2:6-8 KJV
[6] The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. [7] The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. [8] He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s , and he hath set the world upon them.I am a solid testimony of Grace. Everything about me is about the authenticity of Grace. It was Grace of God that brought me thus far. And it is His Grace that will take me all the way to where He is taking me.
Whatever the LORD IS DOING PRESENTLY in my life, is as a result of His love and mercy and Grace. He just chose to use me. He just decided to pick me and make SOMETHING out of this NOTHINGNESS. That is why I am grateful to Him that His Grace has not been in vain over my life or rather, I am trying by His power not to let His grace be in vain over my life.
David was no body in the house of Jesse, but the Grace of God made him Something. Gideon was the least in his father’s house, which was the least in the House of Israel, but the Grace made him a Force to reckon with in his father’s house. I ought not to be this, But His Grace made me What I Am and will make me what He wants me to be.
The earliest time I could recollect of my life was several years back to the earliest moment of my life I could recollect. Beyond that time, I could not recollect anything about my earliest moment. I can still remember I was on the back of a woman, who had carried me and was heading to the market. May be I was two years old or three, I can now not tell.
And who the woman was, I can now not tell. Next earliest moment of my life I can still recollect was when I was sitting on the bare floor in the passage of our house, eating pieces of boiled yam, while I saw a lot of people walking in and passing me to the back of the house where a lot of people were gathering. People were coming in and going out. What they were doing at the back of the house.
Why they were coming in and going out, I did not know. But I thought I was in the age range of three or four years old.
Later, I got to understand, probably, that was the day my mother died, and while people were either coming inside the house for condolence visit and going out, I was kept busy on the floor of the passage of the house with eating pieces of boiled yam. I knew nothing.
I was told my mother died while I was four years old. I was told my mother was terribly sick the moment she was carrying me in her womb. I was told the devil became angry with her throughout her pregnancy and kept me in her womb far longer than the normal nine months. I was told I was in her womb while she did not know I was there, and she thought she had swollen belly.
I was told she went to hospital several times and they did not discover the pregnancy, all what the doctors were seen was that her belly was swollen with what they could not discern. It was far later, a white doctor checked my mother again and told her, she was carrying a baby and the baby would be a great man.
So, I was told that my mother was sick throughout the pregnancy that stayed longer than normal time. I was told that after I was eventually delivered, the sickness lingered in her for another four years before she passed on.
THE DEVIL WAS MAD AT MY COMING AND STILL VERY MAD UP TILL NOW.
He afflicted my mother for carrying me in her womb.
So, I had to live with different relatives at my up growing, because my father had many wives, though my mother was the first wife. She gave birth to just two of us, while my father had many other children.Usually, in a polygamous house, “everyone wife to herself and every child to her mother”. Therefore, I became the responsibility of my Elder Sister who was a student at the time. Because she could not sit down with me yet, she placed me with different relatives while she was struggling to find her footings.
Therefore, my beginning was a very bad one. My growing up was a very rough one. I schooled in many schools, depending upon where my Elder Sister felt I would fare better. I had my Primary 1 and 2 in Ilesha, I read my Primary 3 at St Murumba Lagere IeIfe; and 4 in Awe, Oyo where she was teaching; I had my Primary 5 at Methodist Primary, Oyo, living with a male teacher friend of hers when she was transferred to another far place.
And I had my Primary 6 in Agege, Lagos, living with a family relative. My Form 1 and 2 was with another close relation in Mushin, Lagos and my Form 3 was in the city of Ile-ife, when she brought me closer to her after she had gotten married. So, I completed my secondary education in Ile-Ife.
Because of the circumstances of my growing up, I can recollect that I was very bad right from the age of 7, while I was in Primary 1. I was living with an old woman who was a close relation at the time. My Primary 1 and 2 at the age of seven and eight was a very bad one. I walked about the streets uncontrolled.
I used to leave the house and follow masquerades for two or three days without anyone in particular searching for me. I used to hawk things sold by the old woman. I used to search all the loads in the house for things that was not lost. I used to steal and pick the pockets at the age of 7 and 8. I ought to have been poisoned or killed because I was a very very very bad boy. BUT HIS MERCY AND GRACE KEPT ME.
It was at the age of 15, I came to know the Lord while in Secondary School Form 4. I grew up in the Lord very fast and by age 16 I was already preaching in the school Chapel. Towards the end of my secondary school days, I was already leading an Evangelism Team to various villages and we were missing classes. It was in the end of the Year Variety Activities, while I was in Form 5, that I had my first presentation of Christian drama.
My life got stabilized after I gave my life to Jesus Christ while in school. Every evil occurrence that grew up with me ceased.
My annual terrible sickness every month of April ceased. In the Teachers’ College, I had my first experience of what drama ministry was.I saw altar calls through presentation of evangelical drama. I saw miracles performed by drama ministers. We stopped rain because we wanted to have our drama night, and we released the rain in the midnight after we were sure every student had got back into their hostel. But it was in the College of Education I was introduced into the ministry of Drama Evangelism. It was there, I knew that was where the Lord had called me to serve Him.
Today is April 13, 2018. I am a year older today. Last year I was 57. Today, I am 58 by His Marvelous Grace. Several people the Lord used to bring me to this point of my life. Both family relations and ministry members and friends.
Do you now see what the Grace of God has done to me. He preserved my live and soul.
The Grace of God shows me Mercy and Favor.
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Why Babangida’s Hilltop Home Became Nigeria’s Political “Mecca”.
By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by SaharaWeeklyNG.com
Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s birthday visit to Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) in Minna (where he hailed the octogenarian as a patriotic leader committed to national unity) was more than a courtesy call. It was a reminder of a peculiar constant in Nigerian politics: the steady pilgrimage of power-seekers, bridge-builders and crisis-managers to the Hilltop mansion. Jonathan’s own words captured it bluntly: IBB’s residence “is like a Mecca of sorts” because of the former military president’s enduring relevance and perceived nation-first posture.
Babangida turned 84 on 17 August 2025. That alone invites reflection on a career that has shaped Nigeria’s political architecture for four decades; admired by some for audacious statecraft, condemned by others for controversies that still shadow the republic. Born on 17 August 1941 in Minna, he ruled as military president from 1985 to 1993, presiding over transformative and turbulent chapters: the relocation of the national capital to Abuja in 1991; the creation of political institutions for a long, complex transition; economic liberalisation that cut both ways; and the fateful annulment of the 12 June 1993 election. Each of these choices helps explain why the Hilltop remains a magnet for Nigerians who need counsel, cover or calibration.
A house built on influence; why the visits never stop.
Let’s start with the obvious: access. Nigeria’s political class prizes proximity to the men and women who can open doors, soften opposition, broker peace and read the hidden currents. In that calculus, IBB’s network is unmatched. He cultivated a reputation for “political engineering,” the reason the press christened him “Maradona” (for deft dribbling through complexity) and “Evil Genius” (for the strategic cunning his critics decried). Whether one embraces or rejects those labels, they reflect a reality: Babangida is still the place where many politicians go to test ideas, seek endorsements or secure introductions. Even the mainstream press has described him as a consultant of sorts to desperate or ambitious politicians, an uncomfortable description that nevertheless underlines his gravitational pull.
Though it isn’t only political tact that draws visitors; it’s statecraft with lasting fingerprints. Moving the seat of government from Lagos to Abuja in December 1991 was not a cosmetic relocation, it re-centred the federation and signaled a symbolic neutrality in a country fractured by regional suspicion. Abuja’s founding logic (GEOGRAPHIC CENTRALITY and ETHNIC NEUTRALITY) continues to stabilise the national imagination. This is part of the reason many leaders, across party lines, still defer to IBB: he didn’t just rule; he rearranged the map of power.
Then there’s the regional dimension. Under his watch, Nigeria led the creation and deployment of ECOMOG in 1990 to staunch Liberia’s bloody civil war, a bold move that announced Abuja as a regional security anchor. The intervention was imperfect, contested and costly, but it helped define West Africa’s collective security posture and Nigeria’s leadership brand. When neighboring states now face crises, the memory of that precedent still echoes in diplomatic corridors and Babangida’s counsel retains currency among those who remember how decisions were made.
Jonathan’s praise and the unity argument.
Jonathan’s tribute (stressing Babangida’s non-sectional outlook and commitment to unity) goes to the heart of the Hilltop mystique. For a multi-ethnic federation straining under distrust, figures who can speak across divides are prized. Jonathan’s point wasn’t nostalgia; it was a live assessment of a man many still call when Nigeria’s seams fray. That’s why the parade to Minna continues: the anxious, the ambitious and the statesmanlike alike seek an elder who can convene rivals and cool temperatures.
The unresolved shadow: June 12 and the ethics of influence.
No honest appraisal can skip the hardest chapter: the annulment of the 12 June 1993 election (judged widely as free and fair) was a rupture that delegitimised the transition and scarred Nigeria’s democratic journey. Political scientist Larry Diamond has repeatedly identified June 12 as a prime example of how authoritarian reversals corrode democratic legitimacy and public trust. His larger warning (“few developments are more destructive to the legitimacy of new democracies than blatant and pervasive political corruption”) captures the moral crater that followed the annulment and the years of drift that ensued. Those wounds are part of the Babangida legacy too and they complicate the reverence that a steady stream of visitors displays.
Max Siollun, a leading historian of Nigeria’s military era, has observed (provocatively) that the military’s “greatest contribution” to democracy may have been to rule “long and badly enough” that Nigerians lost appetite for soldiers in power. It’s a stinging line, yet it helps explain the paradox of IBB’s status: the same system he personified taught Nigeria costly lessons that hardened its democratic reflexes. Today’s generation visits the Hilltop not to revive militarism but to harvest hard-won insights about managing a fragile federation.
What sustains the pilgrimage.
1) Institutional memory: Nigeria’s politics often suffers amnesia. Babangida offers a living archive of security crises navigated, regional diplomacy attempted, volatile markets tempered and power-sharing experiments designed. Whether one applauds or condemns specific choices, the muscle memory of governing a complex federation is rare and urgently sought.
2) Convening power: In a season of polarisation, the ability to sit warring factions in the same room is not small capital. Babangida’s imprimatur remains a safe invitation card few refuse it, fewer ignore it. That convening power explains why movements, parties and would-be presidents keep filing up the long driveway. Recent delegations have explicitly cast their courtesy calls in the language of unity, loyalty and patriotism ahead of pivotal elections.
3) Signals to the base: Visiting Minna telegraphs seriousness to party structures and funders. It says: “I have sought counsel where history meets experience.” In Nigeria’s coded political theatre, that signal still matters. Outlets have reported for years that many aspirants treat the Hilltop as an obligatory stop an unflattering reality, perhaps, but a revealing one.
4) The man and the myth: The mansion itself, with its opulence and aura, has become a set piece in Nigeria’s story of power, admired by some, resented by others, but always discussed. The myth feeds the pilgrimage; the pilgrimage feeds the myth.
The balance sheet at 84.
To treat Babangida solely as a sage is to forget the costs of his era; to treat him only as a villain is to ignore the architecture that still holds parts of Nigeria together. Abuja’s relocation stands as a stabilising bet that paid off. ECOMOG, for all its flaws, seeded a habit of regional responsibility. Conversely, June 12 remains a national cautionary tale about elite manipulation, civilian marginalisation and the brittleness of transitions managed from above. These are not contradictory truths; they are the double helix of Babangida’s place in Nigerian memory.
Jonathan’s homage tried to distill the better angel of IBB’s record: MENTORSHIP, BRIDGE-BUILDING and a POSTURE that (at least in his telling) RESISTS SECTIONAL ISM. “That is why today, his house is like a Mecca of sorts,” he said, praying that the GENERAL continues to “mentor the younger ones.” Whether one agrees with the full sentiment, it accurately describes the lived politics of Nigeria today: Minna remains a checkpoint on the road to relevance.
The scholar’s verdict and a citizen’s challenge.
If Diamond warns about legitimacy and Siollun warns about the perils of soldier-politics, what should Nigerians demand from the Hilltop effect? Three things.
First, use influence to open space, not close it. Counsel should tilt toward rules, institutions and credible elections not kingmaking for its own sake. The lesson of 1993 is that subverting a valid vote haunts a nation for decades.
Second, mentor for unity, but insist on accountability. Unity cannot be a euphemism for silence. A truly patriotic elder statesman sets a high bar for conduct and condemns the shortcuts that tempt new actors in old ways. Diamond’s admonition on corruption is not an abstraction; it’s a roadmap for rebuilding trust.
Third, convert nostalgia into institutional memory. If Babangida’s house is a classroom, then Nigeria should capture, publish and debate its lessons in the open: on peace operations (what worked, what failed), on capital relocation (how to plan at scale), and on transitions (how not to repeat 1993). Only then does the pilgrimage serve the republic rather than personalities.
At 84, Ibrahim Babangida remains a paradox that Nigeria cannot ignore: a man whose legacy straddles NATION-BUILDING and NATION-BRUISING, whose doors remain open to those seeking power and those seeking peace. Jonathan’s visit (and his striking “Mecca” metaphor) reveals a simple, stubborn fact: in a country still searching for steady hands, the Hilltop’s shadow is long. The task before Nigeria is to ensure that the shadow points toward a brighter constitutional daybreak, where influence is finally subordinated to institutions and where mentorship hardens into norms that no single mansion can monopolise. That is the only pilgrimage worth making.
Ajadi Celebrates Juju Legend Femolancaster’s 50th Birthday in the UK
Nigerian Juju music legend, Otunba Femi Fadipe, popularly known as FemoLancaster, is being celebrated today in London as he clocks 50 years of age.
Ambassador Olufemi Ajadi Oguntoyinbo, a frontline politician and businessman, led tributes to the Ilesa-born maestro, describing him as a timeless cultural icon whose artistry has enriched both Nigeria and the world.
“FemoLancaster is not just a musician, he is a legend,” Ambassador Ajadi said in his birthday message. “For decades, his classical Juju sound has remained a reminder of the beauty of Yoruba heritage. Today, as he turns 50, I celebrate a cultural ambassador whose music bridges generations and continents.”
While FemoLancaster is highly dominant in Oyo State and across the South-West, his craft has also taken him beyond Nigeria’s borders.
FemoLancaster’s illustrious career has seen him thrill audiences across Nigeria and beyond, with performances in the United Kingdom, Canada, United States of America, and other parts of the world. His dedication to Juju music has projected Yoruba traditional sounds to international stages, keeping alive the legacy of icons like King Sunny Ade and Chief Ebenezer Obey while infusing fresh energy for younger audiences
He further stressed the significance of honoring artistes who have remained faithful to indigenous music while taking it global. “In an era where modern sounds often overshadow tradition, FemoLancaster stands as a beacon of continuity and resilience. He has carried Yoruba Juju music into the global space with dignity, passion, and excellence,” he added.
The golden jubilee celebration in London has drawn fans, friends, and colleagues, who all describe FemoLancaster as a gifted artist whose contributions over decades have earned him a revered place in the pantheon of Nigerian music legends.
“As FemoLancaster marks this milestone,” Ajadi concluded, “I wish him many more years of good health, wisdom, and global recognition. May his music continue to echo across generations and continents.”
celebrity radar - gossips
Gospel Songstress Esther Igbekele Marks Birthday with Gratitude and Celebration
Gospel Songstress Esther Igbekele Marks Birthday with Gratitude and Celebration
By Aderounmu Kazeem Lagos
Lagos, Nigeria — The gospel music scene is aglow today as the “Duchess of Gospel Music,” Esther Igbekele, marks another milestone in her life, celebrating her birthday on Saturday, August 16, 2025.
Known for her powerful voice, inspirational lyrics, and unwavering dedication to spreading the gospel through music, Esther Igbekele has become one of Nigeria’s most respected and beloved gospel artistes. Over the years, she has graced countless stages, released hit albums, and inspired audiences across the world with her uplifting songs.
Today’s celebration is expected to be a joyful blend of music, prayers, and heartfelt tributes from family, friends, fans, and fellow artistes. Sources close to the singer revealed that plans are in place for a special praise gathering in Lagos, where she will be joined by notable figures in the gospel industry, church leaders, and admirers from home and abroad.
Speaking ahead of the day, Igbekele expressed deep gratitude to God for His mercy and the opportunity to use her gift to touch lives. “Every birthday is a reminder of God’s faithfulness in my journey. I am thankful for life, for my fans, and for the privilege to keep ministering through music,” she said.
From her early beginnings in the Yoruba gospel music scene to her rise as a celebrated recording artiste with a unique fusion of contemporary and traditional sounds, Esther Igbekele’s career has been marked by consistency, excellence, and a strong message of hope.
As she adds another year today, her fans have flooded social media with messages of love, appreciation, and prayers — a testament to the profound impact she continues to make in the gospel music ministry.
For many, this birthday is not just a celebration of Esther Igbekele’s life, but also of the divine inspiration she brings to the Nigerian gospel music landscape.
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