Everybody calls her Mummy G.O. Many have even forgotten her real name. Others never even bothered to know her real name. They all call her simply by the name Mummy G.O. It’s a name that, though many wives of General Overseers of several churches now bear, it was made popular by this virtous woman and wife of one Africa’s biggest and most revered men of God. Her name is Pastor (Mrs) Foluke Adenike Adeboye, a televangelist, a conference speaker and shining light to millions of Christian women, while her husband is Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. She helped her husband transform RCCG to the phenomenal height it has reached today. Through thick and thin, they endured the most torid moments of their evangelical careers and today, they are probably the most adored and followed African couple on the planet.

Those who know this incredible woman will tell you she is one of the most compassionate and unassuming woman of God you will possibly ever meet. She does not carry herself like she is the wife of the General Overseer of the biggest church in the world. She is quiet. She is soft spoken. She is strong. She does not compromise righteousness and holiness. With Mummy G.O., it is either you’re fully for Christ or you’re against Him. And if you’re not for God, you can’t be her friend. Her strength of character is one of the reasons why Pastor Adeboye never jokes with her. Apart from his God, Pastor Folu is his world. She is his pillar, the woman with whom he has survived the most gruelling days of his life.

Mummy G.O. rarely grants interviews. She rarely speaks openly about her husband or the special relationship that exists between them. But she broke the rule not so long ago when she revealed a whole lot of things many do not know about her beloved husband, Pastor Adeboye.

When asked to describe his personality, she said, “Number one, he is simple, humble and very hardworking, which we can all see even after he gave his life to Christ. The kind of man he is has really helped the work of the gospel in RCCG. He was very hard working. I used to call him a stuborn achiever. Whatever he put his mind on, he will make sure he achieves it.”

What did she see in him when she got married to him? “When we got married I could see some kindness in him. I could see compassion. As a teacher then, and he is still a teacher now, he used to be with his students, especially when they were in the boarding house. He was always running up and down to make sure they were healed back in the secondary where we were working immediately we got married. He showed a lot of kindness not just to the boarding school students but even at home. He is very caring. His activity before he became the General Overseer, as a university lecturer, is related to the university life. He was always lecturing. One good thing about him was that hardly would you find any of his students that failed their exams because of the way he teaches. I myself had interest in mathematics because of the way he teaches. In those days at the university, he would stay with the students until they pass the exams because he will teach, he will give examples, he will come back again until you understand the concept. So, that kind of activity which he brought into the gospel helped him to grow. Once he found he did not understand something after he became born again, he will study the bible like he was studying for his Phd. and that has really helped him to grow and look for more avenues to know more about the depth of the word of God. He has shared the testimony of how we went to America and people were asking for some things and asked for a double portion of the knowledge of God’s word, that is how much his depth and love to know more about Christ was and which he carried until today.”

What about the Christ Redeemers Ministry, how did it come about, she was asked? “It was the Festac77 when the nation decided to hold a particular festival for all the customs of other nations. W e felt it would bring a lot of idolatry to Nigeria and we decided to do something. And as God led him, we decided on what to do which led to the congress. I always tell people that the congress did not start in 1978, which is the Lekki 78 that most people know, it started in 1977 and the first one was held at Ilesa Grammar School and that first conference brought together Secondary Schools students in that area, and so many others who were not even with the secondary school, to know more about Christ. The success of the first one encouraged us to start doing it in most major cities in Nigeria like Ilorin, Enugu, Asaba, Portharcourt, and so on. And each year we had the congress, RCCG will be established, and that has continued up till today.”

When she was asked to decribe the kind of person Pastor Adeboye is at home, Pastor Folu said: “He is a family man. Despite all his engagements in his ministerial work, he’s still close to his family members, and with mine as well. As a husband, everything that is expected of a Christian husband, he is up to it. And he does it with passion, its not that he just does it because that’s what is expected of him, he does more and I thank God for that. That has brought stability to the work he is doing.”

“He always has time for his children. He never says because of the pastorial work he is too busy for them, he ensures he devotes time for his children. And as a grand father, his grand children love him a lot. They are always running in and out of his room anytime they want. He creates time for them when he’s available and they love him.”

“As a pastor, he pastors us in the house before he goes out to pastor the church. We enjoy his teaching even the Morning devotion. We enjoy his digging deep in the morning devotion. He will dig deep more than he does in the church for us. The areas where a father should admonish a daughter or son, areas where a friend should admonish a friend, everything will come out at morning devotion everyday for us. So, when he’s not around we always miss him.”

What has impressed her the most about this incredible man known as Pastor Adeboye? “One of the things that impressed me the most about him was the fact that he was very hardworking. Like I told you, I used to call him Daddy Stubborn Achiever. When he wanted to do anything, he will make sure he followed it to a reasonable point. If he is focused on doing something and he is leaving the house for any assignment, if he forgets something and you run after him to tell him, he won’t even look back, he will just tell you I will come back to see it. And this has taught me that, I too, if I want to be a helpmate and meet up with him, I must match with the pace at which he’s working and doing whatever he is doing so that there won’t be much gap between the two of us.”

What kind of opposition did they experience when Pastor Adeboye was made General Overseer of the RCCG? “There was no opposition physically, but in their body language, action, the adage says action speaks louder than words, there was opposition. You could see it in the body language of the people we met there. And you cannot blame them. Somebody that has been in the church for over twenty something years and somebody just came from nowhere, somebody who has only spent maybe about seven years, now becoming the General Overseer. We expected the opposition. But thank God for the spirit of humility God has given him and the endurance to endure those times because it was not easy. But finally, we got over it. We are still getting over it because the area where we expected we would receive the attack and opposition is where we received it, which I’m not going to mention. Some of these things are still coming up once in a while but with the help of God we are overcoming them because we knew, we were convinced, that it was God that called us. I know this because three times God showed me, myself, so that is why we can’t go back and we can’t complain because our lives now belong to Jesus and as a result, whatever God says we should do is what we will do. We can’t run back, we can’t say no to our maker.”

And how has she been able to cope, staying righteous and obedient to God’s word for several decades running? “That is the principle of holiness. You can’t compromise because in that house, everything about our lives is about making heaven. That is our ultimate goal. Whatever it will cost, we always pray to God to give us the grace to abide with it. There is no reason to come this far, you think about where you are coming from for the past forty years, through thick and thin and then forget what God has sent you to do. But today, thank God we are seeing the glory now. You can’t compromise Holiness, you can’t compromise it with any other thing because you want to make heaven. So, after all these ups and downs, times of suffering, times of joy, you can see the reward at the end of the day. To make heaven, that is our ultimate goal.”

– WALE LAWAL