The Return of the Son of Man: A Leader of a Divided World (I Am Back!)

Chapter 1

The Beginning and Start of the World’s Problems

In the beginning, the Almighty God created the heaven and the earth; then the earth became formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God said, ‘Let there be light’, and suddenly there was a big bang and light came forth. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness and called the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’. And there were evenings and mornings in the ‘first day’, which means a thousand years from God’s first Creation (Gen. 1: 1-3). Go on and read this story again with an open mind from the inspired word of the Almighty God. Bear in mind that every day of Creation was a thousand years, which means that everything was created by God in 6,000 years. On the final sixth day, after the Creation of everything, God created man in His own image and likeness; in the image of Himself, He created male and female. God blessed them and gave them dominion over all His creations, which made man the highest creature on earth and in the universe, and God rested on the seventh day and blessed this day and made it ‘holy’.

Now God called His male creation man/Adam, and Adam called the female creation woman/Eve because she was created from man. Adam was first created from the dust of the ground, and God gave him life and spirit by breathing into his nostrils. And Adam became a living being and the only ‘Son of God’ because Adam had no earthly father or mother but the Creator Himself. Now the Almighty God had grown a garden in the east called Eden, and there He put the man He had formed and made all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground. The trees were pleasing to the eyes and were good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God purposely put the man in the garden to work in it and take care of it in order to keep the man busy and occupied. The Almighty God then commanded the man that he was free to eat from any of the trees in the garden as a father instructs a son, but He prohibited him from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for the day he ate from the forbidden tree he would surely experience suffering and death. Then the Almighty God knew that it is not good for the man to be alone and caused him to fall into a deep sleep; while he was sleeping, God took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then God made a woman from the rib that He had taken out from the man and brought her to the man. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked and felt no shame at all in the beginning.

The Fall of Mankind

Now the challenging spirit of God called ‘Satan’ transformed himself into a serpent in the garden and said to Eve, ‘Did God really say that you must not eat from the tree in the garden?’ Eve said yes, but that they were free to eat from every tree in the garden except from the tree in the middle of the garden, which was forbidden and that if they ate from the tree they would surely die. ‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to Eve. ‘God knew that if you eat from the forbidden tree your eyes will be opened. You will be like God knowing good and evil just as the Almighty God possesses.’ When Eve heard this revelation from the serpent and knew that the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it; she also took some to her husband Adam, and he ate from it as well. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. When the spirit of God visited them, they hid themselves, and God called to Adam.

He answered and said, ‘I was afraid when I heard your voice, so I hid myself.’

God said to Adam, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat?’

Adam said, ‘My wife gave me some fruits from the forbidden tree, and I ate it.’

Then God said to Eve, ‘What is this you have done?’

‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate from the tree,’ Eve responded.

God then said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.’ To Eve/woman, God said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing, and your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.’ To Adam/man, God said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and disobeyed my commands, cursed is the earth because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. The earth will produce sorrow, pains, sufferings, deaths, etc. until you have returned to the ground from which you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return.’ God then said that the man has become like Him; knowing good and evil, he will not be allowed to reach out his hand and take from the tree of life and eat and have eternal life. So the Almighty God banished Adam and his wife, Eve, from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which they had been lured by Satan. After Adam and Eve had been driven out, God placed a cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth on the eastside of the garden to guard the way to the tree of life, and so it has been since then till this day.

This story is a credible account of Creation and what mankind has been going through since the beginning of the existence of man over 6,000 years ago from the birth of the first man/Adam. There is no other book on the surface of this planet that gives a detailed account of God’s relationship and walk with man from the beginning. Adam became god the moment he disobeyed his Creator and was cursed and restricted from the true knowledge of God and purpose of life here on planet earth. As you may know, God decided to bring His son, the first man ‘Adam’, back to life after 4,000 years of pains, sufferings and deaths to renew His relationship and walk with man in the person of the second Adam ‘Jesus Christ’ through a virgin giving birth in order to make him clean again as Adam’s spirit is the only soul that is desirable and acceptable to God for the redemption of sinful souls on planet earth as Adam is the start of God’s anger and the beginning of the end of God’s anger. When Jesus Christ came to earth, He revealed the gospel of the coming of the Kingdom of God to the world through His disciples after Jesus offered Himself as sacrifice so that man’s sins could be forgiven and the world could be prepared for the establishment of that ‘Kingdom of God’. Jesus taught and brought to pass here on earth, led by the return of Jesus Christ as the Son of Man. Only then would the curse on planet earth be lifted by God and lives would return to normal as God had intended from the beginning. The purpose of the law was to reveal sin in man, and the fall of man was God’s strategy to redeem man in His fullness of glory. And that is where we have arrived at this point in time by God’s grace.

Chapter 2

Meet My Family

On 3 March 1976 at Menas Hospital Onitsha, Nigeria, my mum, Mrs Elizabeth Obitube, was married to Mr Vincent Obitube. She conceived again after having four children and gave birth to twin babies named Chukwuemeka Evans Obitube and Chukwudi Collins Obitube. My mum didn’t know that she was pregnant with twins; during labour, after first giving birth to my twin brother, the midwife and the doctor then told her that she had another baby in her womb. She successfully delivered me after a few more hours in the labour room. Mum gave birth to ten children in total; her second set of male twins died after their birth, and Chizoba, her fourth daughter, died trying to fetch drinking water with a teaspoon from an open drum. She drowned by slipping into a half drum of water falling into it head first, and there was nobody around to rescue her. She would have been saved if Mum hadn’t been too busy with her sewing machine patching up clothes for the family. It was a big tragedy for my parents at the time. Despite the deaths, my parents still had seven children left, four boys including myself and three girls. As a child, I was always sick with malaria and typhoid fever. Mum and Dad would take very good care of me, which I really appreciated. I’m using this opportunity to first give brief stories of my parents and siblings starting with our births, before going into details of my life story and my ultimate calling—visions, dreams, and plans for this planet ‘earth’.

My Father—Mr Vincent Chuks Obitube

Dad was born on 5 November 1944. He experienced unusual miracles when my twin brother and I were born; he got unexpected cash bonus at work, lots of financial help, and baby gifts from friends and family, which was unusual compared to what he got at the birth of his other children. At the time of our birth, Dad was a banker at Barclays Bank, now Union Bank; he was quite eager to build a house at the village since he had no property tied to his name for the family. He bought building materials, moulded lots of building blocks, and bought large heaps of sand for the construction, but something unexpected happened. In 1980, after my younger sister Lizzy Obitube was born, Dad lost his banking job because of his carelessness. He had left his office unlocked to use the toilet, and his colleague took advantage of it. He went into my dad’s office and stole cashier’s checks lying on his office table; also customers who had borrowed bank money through Dad could not pay back their debts on the due dates. When the bank inspectors came for audit and inspection, they noticed the unpaid loans and the missing cashier’s checks from Dad’s office and sacked him. Dad had a 504 Peugeot saloon car at the time and he started running an illegal cab service with his car; we call it kabu kabu in Nigeria. After a few years of using his private car for cab service, he was called back to the banking job when the bank officials realised that he had a very good record with the bank other than their reasons for laying him off, but Dad with his pride decided not to go back to the banking job. He continued with his taxi business instead, and his income for driving as a local kabu kabu man was quite low. He became addicted to playing soccer pool cards, spending his hard-earned money on pool, which would cause arguments between him and Mum all the time. My mum decided to set up a food canteen business to support the family with the daily bills since Dad could not do it alone any more. Dad always drove the family on a holiday trip to his village for each Christmas celebration; it was a tradition for the Easterners in Nigeria, and so many people would travel from the cities to their respective villages for Christmas and New Year celebrations and then go back to their businesses or jobs afterwards. My grandma was a farmer and would grow all sorts of food in her farmyard; my favourite then was sugarcane. She grew lots of it, and we always kept ourselves busy munching sugarcane each time we were at the village. Dad’s father, his ‘Royal Highness’ Chief Adinuba Obitube, was the king (Igwe) of Ochuche Umodu, my dad’s village. Kingship in my village at that time was not about money or fame; it was based on entitlement and age. I remembered my grandfather’s rival for the throne then—a successful businessman who fought the poor Adinuba Obitube family with all of his connections in government and money just to get the kingship in his family’s name, but he failed woefully in all attempts to defeat Granddad. He later paid assassins to kill Granddad before he was crowned as the king. The assassins were successful in shooting Granddad nine times, but he miraculously survived the gunshot wounds in the hospital. He stayed alive and was finally crowned as the king of Ochuche Umodu after much struggle. He ruled the village and lived his life until he was over a 100 years old.

If your time is not yet up on this planet, no matter what the devil tries to do to get you down you will always prevail in one way or the other.

Granddad gave me a name before he died, and it was pronounced ‘Oye ego bu eze’, meaning ‘he that has wealth is the king’.

When we returned to the city, Dad finally got a managerial job at a company owned by my mum’s elder sister’s husband called ‘Iyeagbu and Sons Nigeria Limited’. For the next few years, my dad sincerely managed, developed, restructured, and served Iyeagbu and Sons Nigeria Limited; the company had been in a state of collapse when my dad took over the duties from the previous manager, but then something happened. The two sons of Chief Iyeagbu who were living abroad returned to Nigeria to live and work in the country. Osita, a businessman, was Chief Iyeagbu’s elder son, and his younger brother, Dr Hilary, who studied medicine in the United States of America, had a huge interest in his father’s business; he began to fiddle with the company’s income and neglected my father’s interest in rebuilding a company that had almost collapsed before he took over as the manager. One day, Osita called my dad and requested that he bring the company’s business books to him for checking in private; unfortunately, Chief Iyeagbu’s younger brother coincidentally came to see Osita and saw my dad with him, but he didn’t know the reason my dad was there with the books. Osita decided to call my dad into a private room and left his father’s brother in the sitting room without knowing that he was eavesdropping on his conversation with my dad. Osita noticed the constant withdrawals from the company’s account and demanded answers from my dad, and he told him what his younger brother, Dr Hilary, had been doing. Osita became angry and later confronted his brother about the withdrawals in front of his father’s younger brother who had been eavesdropping when my dad and Osita had the conversation initially.

Iyeagbu’s younger brother had been jealous that my dad took over the managerial job that he would have loved to take over and always held malicious feelings for my dad. It was a perfect opportunity for him to sabotage my dad’s relationship with Chief Iyeagbu since he knew that Chief Iyeagbu would not tolerate anyone that brought problems between his only two sons. He quickly went and told Chief Iyeagbu about the incident between his sons, and Chief Iyeagbu then summoned my dad for an urgent meeting since his two sons were no longer on good terms with each other. He said to my dad at the meeting that he had destroyed the relationship between his only sons and so he had decided to sack him for not bringing the matter to him first instead of his first son Osita. The issue escalated to such an extent that my elder brother, Osita Obitube, whose first name was the same as Chief Iyeagbu’s first son, was also dismissed from his Mercedes Benz spare parts business training with Wencha Iyeagbu, who was Chief Iyeagbu’s youngest brother living in Lagos. The worst of it all was that my elder sister Ngozi, who had served Mrs Iyeagbu since she was a child, was also dismissed from living in the same house with the Iyeagbus. My mother’s elder sister could not do anything about the ugly outcome of things at the time. Chief Iyeagbu cut all ties with my family, which was so harsh on my poor family. Three of my family members were fired in a few weeks because of this evil rage, simply because my dad spoke the truth about what was actually happening under his management at Iyeagbu and Sons Nigeria Limited. My poor dad was only trying to save the company from another financial collapse and didn’t have any intentions of bringing problems to the family. Chief Iyeagbu was at his retirement age at that time, which was the reason Dad did not want to stress him out in the first place. He had to tell Osita the truth, who he believed was more mature and sensible enough to deal with the situation.

Anger can destroy people’s level of good reasoning at the moment of that very anger.

Well, Dad left the company and started a small provisions store business, which didn’t really make much profit for him. He continued in the business for several years, but now he’s fully retired and staying in the village and also sick with Parkinson’s disease. Chief Iyeagbu had a stroke and later died; his wife, Mum’s elder sister, became sick for a short period and died as well. The company Iyeagbu and Sons Nigeria Limited later became bankrupt and folded up. Osita now runs his own private business in Lagos, and Hilary has a medical clinic at Aba.

My Mother—Mrs Elizabeth Obitube

Mum was born on 15 March 1950. I remembered our numerous visits to ‘Okija’, Mum’s village, for holidays with Mum’s parents. Her dad was a spiritual priest who’d always wear white garments, and her mother was a housewife. Her dad had his own church in front of his house and would always prophecy about the future, which we didn’t understand at the time since we were only children. My mum had that trait in her as she always knew things beforehand. My mum’s dad was always prescribing local herbs for different kinds of diseases and sicknesses as well to people. Well, after my dad lost his bank job as explained above, behold! Mum took over and eventually set up a food canteen business at Sabo Market, Sabo Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. She was a very good cook, and her food canteen establishment attracted good customers on a daily basis. We all helped Mum with the day-to-day running of the canteen business mostly after our school got over and on weekends as Sunday was her best selling day, but we would attend the first church service at Saint Dominic’s Catholic Church before resuming in helping at the canteen. Mum employed the services of a helper at times since we were always at school from Mondays to Fridays and she couldn’t do the job alone. Saturdays and Sundays were the best selling days for Mum as she got a lot of customers, mostly customers from Bicu Cosmetics Stores Nigeria Limited. They attended early church service in large numbers at the Saint Dominic’s Catholic Church, Yaba, Lagos, before trooping into my mum’s canteen for breakfast. The church wasn’t far from Mum’s food canteen. The hardest part of my mother’s business at that time was that she had to wake up as early as 5 a.m. or before 5am every day to start cooking all sorts of food like rice, beans, fried plantain, garri, fufu, tomatoes meat stew, egusi/okara/ogbonor soups, vegetable soup, fried meat, and fried fish, all for the morning section of the food business. She did more cooking for the afternoon and evening sections at her canteen. Mum would come back home so tired she would have her bath and go straight to bed after every day’s drudgery. Every morning, my siblings and I would help carry coolers of Mum’s food items on our heads to her canteen after having our showers and dressed up for school before 7 a.m. We took the food coolers to her canteen at Sabo Market from our residence at Adesina, close Iwaya Onike, Lagos, which was miles away, before heading to school for studies. I would admit that it was always a frustrating and stressful journey to transfer the coolers of Mum’s food items on our heads to the canteen every single day before heading to school, but we knew it was the only option for survival at that time as Dad had relocated to Aba, Abia state. He at least tried in his own little way to support the family with house rent and our basic school needs.

Mum had a next-door food canteen rival called Mama Nneka; she had a few customers, while Mum had lots of customers because she was a better cook than Mama Nneka, but at times they had conflict about their customers switching sides. Mum’s food was always delicious than Mama Nneka’s, so when Mama Nneka’s customers realised how nice and delicious my mother’s food was, they would spend their money at Mum’s canteen instead, which made Mama Nneka jealous of Mum and always angry. It wasn’t Mum’s fault that she was very good with the food cooking business. After years of constant struggle to keep up with the family’s daily bills, Mum realised that she could no longer keep up with the house rent at 6 Adesina Close, Yaba, Lagos, due to the fact that my dad had lost his job with Iyeagbu and Sons Nigeria Limited. The journey to Aba from Lagos was about eight to ten hours by bus and less by car. We lost constant contact with Dad since telecommunication was only for the rich at that time. Our landlord then at Adesina Close, Mr Adeoye, had a landline telephone which Dad would use to call Mum on the phone every week and also to speak to us, his children, in turns. Mr Adeoye, the landlord of our three-bed flat at 6 Adesina Close, Lagos, increased the price of the house rent every year, so Mum and Dad thought it would be a bad idea to continue to leave at that address. Mum decided to find another cheaper flat and found a two-bed mini flat bungalow at Oyadiran Estate, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria, which was close to Mum’s food canteen at Sabo Market; she got the house through the flat’s caretaker. Mum had to pay for the full two years’ rent and agreement fees required to gain access to the mini flat to the caretaker without knowing that the landlord of the house who was a top military officer was abroad at the time of the transaction and that he had a stale relationship with his caretaker. We relocated all of our possessions from 6 Adesina Close to the new flat at Oyadiran Estate, Lagos. We settled into the flat all right and thought that it was the beginning of a new life in a new home, but that was one of the greatest mistakes Mum had ever made. As we don’t always know what’s on the corner, something quite tragic happened. After a few months of living in the flat and getting on with our daily activities with regard to school and the food canteen business, the landlord arrived from the overseas and came to the house one evening. He told my mum that he had not authorised his caretaker to let out the flat to anyone and that we had to vacate the premises within a few days or we would regret moving in. Mum became confused with the sudden development. The landlord said that he would take drastic action to regain his property if we refused to leave. At that time, Nigeria was governed by a military dictator called General Babangida; the country was in total control of the military at that time. Mum had no other money left to find another house, so she began to look for the caretaker to get her money back; she went to his house almost every day and night after work to track him down, but could not find him anywhere.

A few days after the notice from the landlord to vacate the premises, my siblings and I were all in school and Mum was busy at her food canteen. We would all always go to Mum’s food canteen after school to help her with serving food to customers, clearing up used dishes from the table, cleaning tables, and washing dirty dishes before going back home with Mum at night to rest. Unfortunately, when we got home that night we realised that the whole roof of the two-bedroom mini bungalow flat had been completely removed, leaving the house fully exposed to rain and burglary. It was a shocking and confusing experience for Mum and all of us because we had nowhere to go and Dad didn’t live in Lagos with us any more. It was a horrifying experience for all of us; we later managed to sleep in the house without a roof that night, but with lots of mosquito bites.

The next day behold, a good Samaritan woman like my mum who lived close to the flat saw what had happened and felt pity for us; she offered to help us by providing us with accommodation in her own house for the following night and the next few days until we got a new place to stay; Mum and us were so grateful for her kindness. We managed to get some of our vital belongings out of the house, especially our clothes. Every other possession, including our couch and television, we had to leave in the house since we had nowhere to keep them and couldn’t carry them along with us to another person’s house. Unfortunately for us, it rained quite heavily that night, and all of our belongings were ruined, while some of our other belongings like the couch, television, and video player were stolen by burglars. It was an unbelievable experience for all of us, but God always makes a way for his people in desperate need for help. The Samaritan woman was godsend to us in our time of desperate need. We lost everything that Mum and Dad took years to acquire. Mum began to search for the cheapest house she could get since the Samaritan woman had offered to pay a year’s rent for us. After a few weeks of looking for a house, Mum found two single bedrooms in boys’ quarters at Oremerin Street, Lady Lack, Palmgrove, Lagos, Nigeria. All the ten tenants of the building shared a single bathroom and toilet, but the good thing about the rooms was that they were separate from the main building and was cheap and affordable. Mum could afford the yearly payment without too much hassle. I remember that at 6 Adesina Close Mum accepted all sorts of people in difficult need into the house, like mentally ill people and lost children. She made sure that she took good care of them and took them back to their homes without stress. She was accused by her food canteen neighbour, Mama Nneka, of stealing and harbouring people’s children, and she reported to the police, but the accusation didn’t go far at all. The police saw that my mum as a good Samaritan with a kind heart, so they never pressed charges against her. I am not surprised that we got help from the Samaritan woman in our desperate time of need at Oyadiran Estate, Lagos.

When we remain good, faithful, and kind to people, the Almighty God will remain good to us.

Mum later lost a lot of her customers to her neighbour because she was hardly at the canteen to do the cooking by herself and her employee wasn’t as good a cook as her. But she regained her customers after we had settled well into the new two single bedrooms at Oremerin Street, Lagos. Due to the fact that Oremerin Street was pretty far away from her canteen at Sabo Market Mum couldn’t cope with the morning sections of the food business; she would have to wait for the gate at Sabo Market to be opened by 7 a.m., before starting to cook, unlike the time when we lived at Adesina Close, Lagos. There she would start cooking as early as 4 a.m. and get the whole food ready for the morning section, which was a lot easier for her then. The business began to become more uninteresting and less rewarding, coupled with the fact that all the tenants the house at Oremerin Street shared only one toilet and one bathroom. It was so difficult for Mum at that time, but we’d got no option though. My younger sister couldn’t finish her secondary school education, which was a few years after Mum’s struggle to keep up with the food canteen business. Mum had discussed and agreed with Dad about closing down the business and relocating to Aba, Abia state, where he lived for a new beginning. Mum made a decision when the time was right that she could no longer keep up with the canteen business with the daily struggle to live a normal life. She closed down the business, and we relocated to Aba, where Dad lived and managed with his provision wholesale business.

Dad had already rented a three-bedroom flat, and it was a brand new building. We left my elder brother Osita and younger sister Lizzy in Lagos. My elder brother Osita had been learning the