I was once a tout - Pastor Pakuta

Pastor Pakuta

Pastor Ebenezer Oso Pakuta is the Assembly Pastor of the Christ Apostolic Church, Itire in Lagos. He relates his touchy life story to TAIWO OLANREWAJU.

HE was born into abject poverty at Ado-Odo in Ogun State in 1955 by parents who were farm ers. His late parents, Johnson Ebenezer and Victoria Pakuta had 13 children, out of which six are alive today. The seventh of his parents’ children, but now the third child, Ebenezer Oso Pakuta, was born on a market day and there was a prophesy, according to his mother, that he would be a public person and would be great in life.

But there was nothing pointing in the direction of greatness as he went hungry on the day he failed to go and work on the farm. He had known poverty at the age of six and only had the privilege of owning a pair of sandals in a year.

His father, who had promised to educate him died while he was in primary two and with nobody to help him, he went to work as a househelp in Lagos in 1969. Initially, he was to work as a shopkeeper in a provisions shop but when his rich boss saw him, she said she could only employ him as a househelp.

The rich woman really maltreated him as he ate only once a day between 4 and 4.30 p.m. What he ate, however, was the remnant of the family’s lunch despite the fact that he cooked the meals, under close supervision though.

After nine months, Oso became fed up with the job and signified his interest to leave. His boss, however, refused to pay him his salary of four (4) kobo per month which she claimed to have been keeping for him.

Back to square one, Oso was dropped at his relation’s place, the one who got him the job. He was a transporter and he took him to Agege where he became a garage boy and a toll- collector. One day, he fought his relation’s landlady, an Alhaja, who ejected him and his elderly relation, and he was taken to Oshodi where he slept in the garage.

“For eight (8) years, I followed Adebayo Success, a notorious touts’ leader in Lagos and I learnt and mastered all the vices you could think of — stealing, bag snatching, fighting, visiting herbalists, using charms, womanising, smoking indian hemp and in 1970, I started smoking heroine. It was N5 per capsule and I smoked 20 capsules on daily basis.

“I made a lot of money then, out of which I delivered only N6 (six naira) to success,” he volunteered.

In spite of all these vices, Oso still went to the church every Sunday, although with his drugs in the pockets of his trousers. He also learnt driving in the garage, and that later helped him greatly in life.

By the end of 1970, he fought with a policeman and was locked up in the cell for three days, where he was thoroughly beaten up. Meanwhile, his mother never stopped praying for him.

At a point in time, he became tired of garage life and joined a fuji musician; he can’t remember the band’s or leader’s name now. But he recollected that the man began to play fuji at about the same time the popular Alhaji Wasiu Ayinde started playing fuji in Lagos.

They had an outing on a particular day and a bandboy brought his brother’s bus which conveyed them to the venue.

Oso, however, noticed that the vehicle had a lot of Jesus’stickers on it. He, therefore, approahced the band boy and asked him to ask his brother to assist him (Os0).
On the day he visited the band boy’s brother, who was a naval officer, he took eight bottles of

small stout (odeku), indian hemp and heroine, to be bold enough to face the officer. “Ïmmediately he came into the parlour where I was waiting for him and I set my eyes on him; I fell in love with him and admired the way he was dressed, in immaculate white uniform. He embraced me, not minding my dirty clothes which eventually stained his uniform,”he recollected.

The man, whom he described as very loving asked that he be served Lipton tea. “That was the first time I took Lipton tea in my life. That was in 1978,’he confessed. Right there in the naval officer’s sitting room, Oso Pakuta gave his life to Jesus Christ. It might have taken time but his mother’s prayers for him did not go unanswered. When he went back to his brother who lived at Osodi, to whom he always ran for succour whenever there was problem in the garage; his brother noticed his gentle mien and asked him what happened to him. Oso replied that he had given his life to Christ.

His carpenter brother asked him where he had seen Christ and slapped him repeatedly three times, when Oso neither slapped him back nor attempted to fight him, as was his usual practice, he raised an alarm that Oso had become mad and started crying.

Thereafter, Oso slept on the barefloor in the room because his brother, out of annoyance, tore his sleeping mat, and he dreamt and saw a tall man in white cloth who gave him a bell and asked that Oso followed him.

He recounted three occasions when he would have died but God had mercy on him and preserved his life. First was when he collected money from drivers at Oshodi garage and lied that he didn’t. They all ganged up and wanted to teach him a lesson, but he escaped and ran away from the motor park for a month.

At another time, he followed a group, 25 of them in number, to take over a motor park at Palm-grove/Onipanu, only nine of them returned alive with injuries. He worked as conductor for a tout and stole his money and at the close of work at the Lawanson park, his boss asked the touts to deal with him. They stripped him naked, retrieved the money from him and locked him in the bus overnight. It rained heavily in the night and he caught cold but fortunately for him, the rain swept all his friends away with whom he slept at Oshodi park and they all died. He explained that there was no bridge at Oshodi then and that they slept inside rings (such that moulded and used in drilling wells) in the gutter.