NATIONAL PRAYER ALTAR
MARATHON PRAYERS
Monday 11th – Sunday 17th August 2025
TOWARDS 2027
... for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light (Luke 16:8).
As Nigeria approaches another crucial election season, it is good for Christians to review their impact on politics and power in Nigeria. It amounts to naivety for any Christian to claim that the Church should not get involved in politics. Isaiah 9:6 places the responsibility of good governance on earth upon the Church: "For unto us a child is born ... and the government shall be upon his shoulder." The shoulder is a part of the body. That prophetically places the responsibility of governance upon the Body, Christ being the Head of that body.
For many years, Christians in Nigeria have abdicated this responsibility, choosing only to pray and fast for good governance. They seem to have ignored the word of God that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26). If there is going to be a righteous government in Nigeria, the children of light must oversee the throne. In the prayer call of 11th – 17th December 2023, entitled THE BATTLE FOR THE THRONE, the contradictory posture of some Christian leaders and some Christian elites who support non-Christian political candidates into power, yet pray for good governance, was decried. Christians must remember that Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and there can be no kingdom without a throne. Whoever controls the throne, controls the kingdom. So, if the Christian community desires to do the will of the Lord and establish the Kingdom of God in Nigeria, they should not start with evangelism only but should include focused plans to take the Presidency. Whoever controls the Presidency, controls Nigeria.
History records that God established this precedence in the early Church. After the Lord inaugurated His Church, Satan attacked it with persecution. From the inception of the Church until 312 AD, the followers of Christ have been ruthlessly persecuted. When God decided to stop the persecution, He got Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. The emperor promulgated the Edict of Tolerance, putting an end to the persecution, and the Church flourished. What did God do in that situation? God took the throne. If Nigeria Christians want Islamist terrorism to come to an end, they should organize to produce the president , with a stroke of the pen, the president will end all these evils.
Today, missionaries and gospel workers amongst the unreached people’s groups in Nigeria are targeted by Islamist terrorists for elimination. Christian communities in the North and the Middle Belt regions of the country have become endangered species. The United Nations issued a report in June 2025 stating that 8.18 million Nigerians are in IDP camps. Hundreds of Christian villages in the Middle Belt and northern Nigeria have been sacked and their Christian residents killed, while those lucky to escape end up in IDP camps. To date, the attackers have neither been arrested nor prosecuted. On the contrary, the terrorists have been absorbed into the state security architecture as “repentant terrorists”. Instead of prosecuting them, the State rewarded them. Why is this so? The answer lies in who controls the throne of Nigeria.
Ironically, the greatest problem of the Christian is neither the Muslims nor the Islamist terrorists but the leaders of the Church. The Nigeria Church has a generation of leaders whose commitment to mammon far outweighs their commitment to their flock and the Lord who called them. To worsen matters, Christians are seldom willing to confront those leaders. Had Christians been willing to call their leaders to order, the carnage on the Church might have been less.
Because the focus of that leadership is neither the safety of Christians nor the well-being of the Church, basic analysis of the situation in Nigeria is rarely done. Consequently, the Christian bloc takes decisions incongruous with reality and injurious to the Christian faith. A good example is the preparation for the 2027 elections.
Some Church leaders brought APC into power in 2015. They ensured that it was re-elected in 2019, and publicly, in a paid newspaper advertorial, endorsed its criminal hijack of the democratic process in 2023. In fact, one of the Church leaders pronounced a curse on any Christian if they did not vote for APC, the same APC that facilitated and supervised the murder of millions of Nigerians. The moment the Muslim-Muslim ticket got into Aso Villa in 2023, it shut down the only Christian place of worship in the seat of power, while over four mosques operate round the clock within the Villa. The Marathon Prayer call of 3rd – 9th March 2025 entitled "ASO VILLA CHAPEL" focused on that concern. It was more than preventing “noise” on Sunday morning. It was a clear announcement that Christ was not welcome in Nigeria.
As the country approaches 2027 elections, what should concern the Christian community is, what will happen to the Church if a Muslim should win the 2027 Presidential election. This matter is not about any individual or region in the country. It is about the collective interest of the Body of Christ, including the Christian leaders.
The Buhari administration ruled Nigeria for eight years and left no one in doubt that it came to launch a Jihad. After the eight years of Buhari, some Christians leaders facilitated the emergence of a Muslim-Muslim ticket for another four years, making it a total of twelve years of Islamist dominance in power. If the throne of Nigeria does not welcome Christ, what would happen to His followers in the country? The message is clear.
Let us continue with the analysis. If a Muslim should win the 2027 election, then there would be sixteen years of uninterrupted Muslim rule in the country. By 2031, the Muslim North would demand power rotation on the basis that the South has had eight years in power. One does not need a seer to predict that the candidate of the North would be another Muslim. This would give Islam twenty-four years of uninterrupted access to the Presidency. If at the end of eight years of Buhari the Aso Villa Chapel was shut, what would be shut after twenty-four years of uninterrupted Muslim rule in Nigeria?
Therefore, the Christian community should organize and mobilize to ensure that a Christian sits on the throne of Nigeria in 2027. For Christians, it should be a matter of existential threat for anyone to suggest that a Muslim should be the president in 2027.
The National Prayer Altar does not begrudge the right of Muslims to produce the President of Nigeria. Every citizen of this country has equal right and equal access to contest election and win. What the Altar is calling for is balance and harmony in a country where religious intolerance and insurgency have been used to devastate and decimate the Christian community. It is that balance that backs the just demand that a Christian should be the president in 2027.
Fortunately, a Muslim from the South has taken the first term in the eight-year rotational zoning of the presidency to the South. It is fair to permit a Christian from the South to take the second term of the eight years to restore balance and assurance, that Nigeria belongs to all the citizens.
Another area in which the Christian community should exercise discernment is the recent bill in the National Assembly, proposing that the Sultan of Sokoto and the Ooni of Ife should be statutory co-chairmen in the National Council of Traditional Rulers. While the Sultan represents Islam, and the Ooni represents traditional religion, where is Christianity? Are there no Christian traditional rulers in the country? There were frantic attempts to deny the matter after the news broke out. The uproar that followed the bill was cause for concern.
Under the circumstances, Christians should ask if successive Church leaders did not plan for such a time like this since religious riots started in the ‘80s. In 2001, the five Church blocs that make up CAN established a socio-political arm of the Church, called Christian Social Movement of Nigeria (CSMN). While CAN was established to build unity amongst the various denominations, CSMN was established to engage social issues, including politics. The constitution of CSMN was signed into effect by the then president of CAN, the late Prelate Sunday Mbang.
Curiously, CAN amended its constitution in 2021 and inserted a clause stating that any Christian group that is not mentioned in its amended constitution was not established by CAN. That amended constitution did not mention CSMN even though CAN established it in 2001. Why would Church leaders commit such omission? The Clergy, who are the managers of CAN, have taken over the political process of the Church. The Nigeria Church lacks unity because those assigned the role of uniting the Church are busy playing politics, which is not their assignment. Political engagement is the task of the laity who are meant to be mobilized and harmonized by the CSMN. The Church has a situation in which the job the screwdriver was created to do, has been taken over by the hammer.
If the Nigeria Church is going to be effective in political engagement, the two Church structures should face their responsibilities. CAN should focus on its motto: “That they all may be one”, and leave CSMN to focus on its motto, “Thy Kingdom Come”.
Nigeria Church leaders should set aside all squabbles and personal resentments and work with all Christians to deliver the Church from an obvious sink hole. Children of the same father should not quarrel when their father’s house is on fire. Christian leaders should unite to save Nigeria.
Undeniably, the Nigeria Church is facing existential threat, and Christian unity is indispensable in this season. The Church must unite to produce the president in 2027.
God bless Nigeria.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Ps. 133
Pray for unity amongst all Christians in Nigeria.
2. Ps. 125
Pray for divine protection for all Christian workers in the North and Middle Belt of Nigeria.
3. Mk 10:42-45
Pray for humility and lowliness of heart for Church leaders, to accept Godly counsel.
4. Num. 23:23
Nullify with the blood of Jesus every sorcery and all manners of satanic manipulation that foster strife and discord amongst Christians in Nigeria.
5. Gen. 9:6
Pray that God’s righteous judgment shall fall upon those who shed the blood of the innocent in Nigeria.
6. Is. 9:6
Pray for grace and divine intervention for Nigeria to have a Christian president in 2025.
7. Is. 46:9-10
Thank God for His promise of a new Nigeria, and pray that nothing shall hinder the fulfilment of this promise.
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DAILY INTERDENOMINATIONAL PRAYERS FOR NIGERIA
Started since 18th April, 2022
TIME: 9:00pm – 10:00pm daily (Nigeria time)
VENUE: ZOOM
ZOOM link:
https://zoom.us/j/96806190505?pwd=K2RqcUN3YjRwQzEzRDZaMUt2N1ZsUT09
Meeting ID: 968 0619 0505
Passcode: 024184
LINK TO MARATHON PRAYERS ZOOM ROOM
https://zoom.us/j/94064259957?pwd=bm13eDlSNTMrZWhVdTl5bmNRRlBHQT09
Meeting ID: 940 6425 9957
Passcode: Altar