In 1989, Daniel Kolawole ‘DK’ Olukoya, a recent University of Reading masters graduate,
summoned a prayer meeting in his Lagos living room. He was already a devout man and an adherent
to the Pentecostal wave that hit Nigeria in the 1970s.
24 people showed up. Soon after, according to the church’s website, they began to experience
miracles. Olukoya held more meetings. Attendance rose. Pretty soon he was a minor celebrity,
and in 1994 he opened the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries: a church whose name,
he says, was revealed to him during prayer. Today MFM is a global sensation. Headquartered
in Ponder’s End, London, it has branches on six continents and millions of followers.
Its spiritual home is still Lagos, however – specifically a giant former slum in the
historic district of Yaba, just yards from the spot where it all began. It is devoted
to “the revival of Apostolic signs and Holy Ghost fireworks”.
To the side of the church, in a tiny, one-room office, sits the headquarters of Mountain
Of Fire And Miracles FC, a football club owned entirely by the ministry. DK Olukoya grew
up a football fanatic. His father, a policeman, made him the kit-man of his division’s weekend
team and he played as an outside right, idolising Pelé and Teslim “Thunder” Balogun, a
Nigerian striker who scored three goals for Queens Park Rangers in their 1956-57 Third
Division South campaign. Lagos’s biggest team was Julius Berger (now
Bridge FC), a club that produced world-class talent including Taribo West, Yakubu Aiyegbeni
and Sunday Oliseh. Olukoya preferred Stationery Stores, with whom they shared the picturesque
Onikan Stadium that overlooked the Gulf of Guinea. By the mid-2000s, however, both clubs
had fallen on tough times. Stationery Stores ran out of cash and dropped out of the Nigerian
Premier League in 2004. Julius Berger were relegated two years later and shuttered in
2008. That left Lagos, Africa’s largest city with
a population of around 20 million, without a top-flight football club. Olukoya wanted
to bring the game back to Lagos and inspire the city’s youngsters. MFM FC would be part
of his ministry’s agenda to “bring more youths to Christ.”
The club first competed at the DK Olukoya Cup in 2008, at MFM’s Prayer City, a sprawling
complex outside Lagos built at a reported cost of £100m that is big enough to hold
half a million worshippers. Soon after, they applied for a spot in the Nigerian National
League, the country’s second tier, but wouldn’t win many headlines until 2014, when they beat
a Colombian team in Goa, India, to win the Unity World Cup, a religious tournament held
to decide which Christians are best at football. The newly crowned Best Church in the World
gained promotion to the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) in 2015 and avoided
relegation on goal difference the following year. They moved in at the historic Agege
Stadium, in the heart of old Lagos. In 2017 the miracles kept coming. MFM won
19 of 38 games to finish league runners-up to Plateau United, earning a spot in the CAF
Champions League. Their young coach, Fidelis Ikechukwu, adopted a form of gegenpressing
that stifled opposition, creating space into which they sprung star strikers, Sikiru Olatunbosun
and Stephen Odey. Throughout MFM’s rise, the church played
a key role. It scouted players from Lagosian congregations. It capitalised on its flock
around Nigeria to fill away ends. At the beginning of each half the crowd stood with the players
to sing Gospel songs and a big steel band accompanied the team at each match.
Fisayo Dairo, chief football writer at ACLSports, says MFM has at least ten churches in each
major city. “I think MFM is one of the best brands I’ve ever seen.”
Church-affiliated clubs are as old as the game. In 1531, the Puritan pastor Thomas Eliot
scolded footballers for their “beastly and extreme violence,” but by the beginning
of the 20th century churches were the foundations of 11 major English clubs, including Aston
Villa, Everton, Manchester City, Southampton and Tottenham. Celtic were also formed by
members of a Glaswegian Catholic church to alleviate poverty among the city’s Irish
population. These days European religiosity has dampened.
That is not the case in Nigeria. According to Gallup, it is the world’s second most
religious nation behind Thailand. Of Nigeria’s 187m people, 46.3% are Christian, most of
whom are located in the south, and 46% are Muslim, many of whose heartland is in the
arid north. In the southern city of Lagos, adverts for
televangelists and pastors are plastered all over billboards, LED screens and street signs.
Nigeria has a particularly strong Christian fundamentalist movement and Pentecostals like
DK Olukoya sit at its vanguard. Evangelism is big business and “Pastorpreneurs” often
fly to sermons in private jets. Some have criticised them as cynical flim-flam men who
make millions off the poor. According to many Nigerians, the popularity
of pastorpreneurs is symptomatic of a population which, disgruntled by graft and cronyism at
the top of society, has turned its hopes on snake-charmers and tongue-speakers.
Olukoya himself has not escaped scrutiny. Last year, MFM was implicated in a fraud case
in the US state of Maryland. Worse still, an MFM pastor in Liverpool was taped leading
chants against homosexuality that included the phrase “die in the fire”. When a gay
journalist then questioned the leader involved, he was offered a course of conversion therapy.
Still, Olukoya has seen his star rise even further through his association with MFM FC,
whose team are often called the “Olukoya Boys”. He doesn’t go to many games, so
his staff usually send him videos instead. But his prestige is still felt: In November
2017, Lagos State governor Akinwunmi Ambode pledged £100,000 to the club for its Champions
League qualification. It looked to have paid off when, in February 2018, MFM stunned Real
Bamako 2-1 on aggregate to reach the second round.
There, they would face MC Alger of Algiers. A 2-1 victory at the Agege gave them hope.
But it was quickly snuffed out across the Sahara, where Alger went four goals up in
the first half hour. By the end it was six, and MFM had been taught a lesson in new money.
In truth it was no surprise – and money was a big factor. Nigeria has, by some distance,
Africa’s largest GDP. But its football clubs have struggled to make an impact on the continent.
Since 1964 just one Nigerian club has won the Champions League: Enyimba, from the oil-rich
Niger Delta, who won back-to-back titles in 2003 and 2004.
No Nigerian club has ever won the CAF Confederations Cup, Africa’s equivalent of the Europa League.
That is mostly down to decades of shambolic post-colonial military rule that has sucked
up funds and fuelled corruption. That grift has drifted into football and players and
clubs are often stung by the many fake agents who ply young men with dreams of foreign riches
and teams with promises of the Next Big Thing. Accusations of match-fixing are also rife.
Today, Nigerian clubs are still poor compared with those in neighbouring countries. The
minimum NPFL salary is £293 per month. Players get bonuses for matches on foreign soil. But
they are usually confined to double-digit stipends. Dairo told me MFM’s is the lowest
of them all. While big African teams such as Raja Casablanca,
Al Ahly and Orlando Pirates can sign players for hundreds of thousands of pounds, and keep
them on lucrative contracts, Nigerian clubs rely on local talent that leaves soon after
it flourishes. Olatunbosun and Odey, MFM’s star duo last year, have both left for Swiss
side FC Zürich. Of the Nigeria team that faced Algeria in
their last World Cup qualifier in November, just one, the Enyimba goalkeeper Ikechukwu
Ezenwa, played domestically. Fans often prefer to watch Premier League matches on TV than
the NPFL in person, meaning that big gate receipts are tough to find.
The biggest effect Nigerian teams’ lack of money has on their Champions League chances
is shown in their logistics. Unable to pay for expensive flights, clubs are often forced
to take lengthy connecting flights, or even coaches. For MFM’s away leg in Mali their
squad flew for a day across Africa to Addis Ababa, then to Bamako. The direct route takes
less than three hours. The rise of Mountain of Fire and Miracles
FC has been one of African football’s great modern tales. Whether it can keep on moving
upwards depends on many things – not least cash. That will not stop its fans and staff
praying for success.