Adeboye addressed the issue on Sunday during the church’s November Thanksgiving service, where he criticised the media report for portraying him as a wicked person over the incident.
He said he was initially amused when he came across the publication, which claimed he had carried a placard against Jonathan while he was president.
“Recently, somebody wrote in the papers, or said somehow, ‘Pastor Adeboye is a very wicked man. After all, we know that not too long ago, he carried a placard against President Goodluck Jonathan,’” he said.
Although he confirmed carrying a placard, the cleric explained that it was part of a prayer walk and had nothing to do with protesting against Jonathan.
“True, I carried a placard. I can’t deny that. It was important. It was a prayer walk. We wanted to pray,” he said.
He explained that the exercise followed an instruction directing churches to hold prayer walks around their premises.
“The chairman said all churches should do a prayer walk near their churches. That’s what I did,” he said.
Adeboye also pointed out that the date of the exercise showed that the report was misleading, as he carried the placard in 2020, five years after Jonathan left office in 2015.
“But I carried the placard in 2020. Jonathan ceased to be president in 2015. I carried the placard five years in the second term of Buhari,” Adeboye said.
He accused the journalist of changing the story and faulted the failure to properly investigate the incident before publishing the report.
“But a journalist twisted it. I said, I did what I did in 2015. And everybody swallowed it,” he said.
The RCCG leader also recalled his exposure to journalism studies in the 1960s, saying he was taught the importance of investigating stories and confirming facts before making them public.
“I remember in those days in the Department of Journalism, when you go there and you take a course, they talked about something called investigative journalism,” he said.
He further stressed the need for journalists to look beyond what appears on the surface before reporting an incident.
“That things don’t appear as they may seem. Investigate, if you have a story, before you take it to the press.”
