Ezekiel returned to Surulere in 2001 with no
suitcase, only a faded Bible and the smell of
kerosene on his clothes — three years after he
walked out of the House of Fire Ministries,
calling his father’s miracles “hustle with holy
water.” The city had changed: billboards
screamed “Oil is God’s Blessing,” and youths in
Nike sneakers prayed at roadside shrines,
begging for quick wealth. He slept under the
bridge at Mile 2, watching men wash their hands
in petrol before touching their phones —
believing it made their Yahoo Yahoo prayers
stick.
His gift was not prayer. It was touch. When he
pressed his palm to a woman’s swollen belly at
the Alimosho clinic, her tumour vanished by dawn.
No chant. No oil. Just his skin on hers. The
news spread like fire in dry grass. By week two,
five hundred people queued before his tent, each
holding a receipt from a failed hospital, a
child’s Xray, a wife’s empty womb. He healed
them all — but each cure cost him something: a
tooth, a memory, a year of his breath.
The bishop’s debt had been paid with land, not
prayer. The church owned three blocks of Lagos
real estate — bought with donations from oilmen
whose sons had been healed by Ezekiel’s mother
before she died screaming in the prayer room,
her body turning black as burnt palm kernel. The
bishop never told the congregation: her healing
was the first transaction. The altar’s power
came from bloodmoney laundering through faith.
Now, Ezekiel’s gift threatened to expose it.
On the third Friday, a limousine rolled up to
the tent. The driver carried a briefcase with a
cheque for ₦15 million — and a man inside, the
oil tycoon who built the first refinery in Port
Harcourt, now wasting in his bed, his liver a
sack of rot. The bishop came too, in his best
suit, eyes wet with fear. “If you heal him,” he
whispered, “the whole city will know the church
is not God’s hand — it’s his blood.”
Ezekiel touched the tycoon’s chest. The man
gasped. His skin flushed red. Then white. Then
the veins under his eyes cracked like dried
earth — and vanished. The tycoon sat up, coughed,
drank water like a boy. The crowd roared.
Cameras flashed. But Ezekiel collapsed. His
right hand turned grey. His fingernails fell off
one by one. He could not speak. Could not move.
The bishop knelt beside him, not in prayer — in
bargaining. He pulled a small vial from his
pocket: the last of his wife’s ashes, mixed with
diesel and Psalm 91.
The rule was never spoken, but every healer in
Lagos knew it: You cannot heal the rich without
paying the earth. The oil didn’t just fund the
church — it fed the spirits that kept the
miracle alive. Ezekiel had been paying with his
body. Now, the bishop paid with his soul. He
poured the vial into the tycoon’s mouth.
The tycoon stood. He hugged Ezekiel. He gave the
cheque to the church. The next day, the bank
accounts cleared. The billboards changed: “God
is in the Pipeline.” But Ezekiel never walked
again. His voice stayed gone. His hands never
healed. The bishop kept his pulpit. The people
kept coming. And every time someone touched
Ezekiel’s wheelchair — just once — their pain
left. But Ezekiel’s bones grew lighter. His
shadow, thinner. By the end of the month, he was
a ghost in a wheelchair, still healing. Still
silent. Still the pastor’s son. Still the price.
