Apostle Suleman: Heal COVID19/HIV Patient and Get a Thousand Dollars

I am challenging the founder of Omega Ministries, Apostle Suleman to demonstrate his so-called gift of healing under agreed medical and scientific conditions. I ask Suleman to heal a person with a confirmed case of COVID19 and get a thousand US dollars. This challenge has become necessary because Apostle Suleman has in a recent video urged the government of Nigeria to allow him and other pastors with the gift of healing into the isolation centers so that they could pray and heal those who have been infected by the virus.

This request should not go unattended. Suleman specifically said that the gifted pastors could heal 18 out of 20 COVID19 patients. This is a reasonable number. Isn’t it? And in a recent tweet, Apostle Suleman affirmed that (his) God was bigger than the coronavirus. This challenge is for Suleman to heal, not 2 or 3 persons, not 10 or 15 patients but one person with a viral infection.

For too long, people from various religious traditions have claimed to have the ability to heal all kinds of diseases including malaria, diabetes, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. Self-acclaimed godmen and women have organized healing/prayer sessions where they supposedly got rid of illnesses through faith and prayers. This ability, if proven to be effective, could be an enormous resource at a time like this when the world to trying to contain a vicious pandemic, that is ravaging many parts of the world.

Incidentally, faith healing in Africa has largely been taken for granted. Faith healing claims have gone unchallenged and untested. There has not been any major effort to hold African faith healers to account or get them to openly and publicly demonstrate the potency and efficacy of their healing propositions under scientific testing conditions. The outbreak of COVID19 offers an ample opportunity to realize this – to test and confirm the much-avowed healing gifts and abilities of pastors.

So I hereby challenge Apostle Suleman to prove that he can heal COVID19 patients through prayer. Apostle Suleman will get one thousand US dollars for any proven case of faith healing of a COVID19 patient under agreed scientific conditions.

Suleman should agree to pray for a COVID19 patient from wherever he is since going into the isolation centers without face masks and personal protective equipment is not medically permitted and would violate existing laws and regulations. After all, Jesus performed miracles at a distance (John 4: 46-54). Didn’t he? And also the Bible enjoins believers to pray in secret, and that the prayers would be answered (Matthew 6:6).

So it is not necessary for Apostle Suleman or any gifted pastor to get into the isolation centers before they could pray and heal any COVID19 patient.

Besides, Suleman should consider this a standing challenge, which he could accept after the vaccine has been discovered and regulations on managing COVID19 infection have been relaxed.

Otherwise, I challenge Apostle Suleman to heal an HIV/AIDS patient through prayer and take home a thousand US dollars. HIV is another viral infection that is killing many people in Nigeria and across the world. Apostle Suleman should use this window to demonstrate under medical and scientific conditions his supernatural gift of healing. He should show Nigerians and the rest of the world that his God is truly bigger than a virus, whether it is COVID19 or HIV. I hope that Apostle Suleman or any other gifted pastor accepts this challenge and seizes this opportunity to demonstrate the potency and efficacy of faith healing.

Leo Igwe holds a doctoral degree in religious studies from the University of Bayreuth and a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Calabar. He directs Advocacy for Alleged Witches and can be reached at advocacyforallegedwitches@gmail.com or nskepticleo@yahoo.com or tel 09039908664

Leo Igwe

Leo Igwe (born July 26, 1970) is a Nigerian human rights advocate and humanist. Igwe is a former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and has specialized in campaigning against and documenting the impacts of child witchcraft accusations. He holds a Ph.D from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Igwe’s human rights advocacy has brought him into conflict with high-profile witchcraft believers, such as Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, because of his criticism of what he describes as their role in the violence and child abandonment that sometimes result from accusations of witchcraft. His human rights fieldwork has led to his arrest on several occasions in Nigeria. Igwe has held leadership roles in the Nigerian Humanist Movement, Atheist Alliance International, and the Center For Inquiry—Nigeria. In 2012, Igwe was appointed as a Research Fellow of the James Randi Educational Foundation, where he continues working toward the goal of responding to what he sees as the deleterious effects of superstition, advancing skepticism throughout Africa and around the world. In 2014, Igwe was chosen as a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and in 2017 received the Distinguished Services to Humanism Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Igwe was raised in southeastern Nigeria, and describes his household as being strictly Catholic in the midst of a “highly superstitious community,” according to an interview in the Gold Coast Bulletin.[1] At age twelve, Igwe entered the seminary, beginning to study for the Catholic priesthood, but later was confused by conflicting beliefs between Christian theology and the beliefs in witches and wizards that are “entrenched in Nigerian society.”[1] After a period of research and internal conflict due to doubts about the “odd blend of tribalism and fundamentalist Christianity he believes is stunting African development,” a 24-year-old Igwe resigned from the seminary and relocated to Ibadan, Nigeria