A photograph showing the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, carrying a placard during a public procession has circulated on social media.
Fact-Check: Did Adeboye protest against Jonathan?
It is with claims that the cleric previously protested against former President Goodluck Jonathan but has refused to challenge the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
Verdict: Misleading
Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye (popularly known as “Daddy G.O.”) is the highly influential Nigerian Doctor of Mathematics and the General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the world.
Verification
In order to verify this claim, the fact checker carried out a reverse image search on google and results from the search traced the photograph to media reports published on February 2, 2020.
According to reports from The Punch Newspaper, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye led millions of The Redeem Christian Church members on a prayer walk to end the spate of insecurity and killings in Nigeria, and this was during the late President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
This establishes that the photograph being circulated as evidence of a protest against Jonathan is being presented with the wrong political context.
Although there is no verified evidence that Adeboye led or participated in a street protest against Jonathan, historical reports show that he raised concerns about insecurity during the former president’s administration.
A Vanguard Newspaper report published in 2010 stated that Adeboye had sent a petition to Jonathan over kidnappings and that the RCCG was planning a one-million-man protest rally.
However, after reviewing the available reports, there is no evidence that the proposed rally actually took place.
Speaking during the RCCG November Thanksgiving Service on November 1, 2026, Adeboye criticised the circulation of reports linking the 2020 photograph to Jonathan’s administration.
He maintained that the procession was a prayer walk against insecurity and not a political protest against the former president.
Conclusion
The claim that Pastor Enoch Adeboye protested against former President Goodluck Jonathan, as represented by the widely circulated photograph, is misleading.
Evidence from contemporaneous media reports shows that the photograph was taken on February 2, 2020, during a prayer walk against insecurity under the administration of the late former President Muhammadu Buhari.
