I smoked 10 packs of cigarettes daily for 10 years, woman says

The Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Revival Ministries’ programme, Hope For The Barren, has come and gone, but the event touched many lives, who shared their testimonies. Among them was a notorious armed robber, who terrorised Onitsha and Owerri axis with his group for many years and a woman, who ran a beer parlour business and was smoking Indian hemp and cigarette for 10 years.

According to 48-year-old Ngozi Ndukanma, she started smoking when she was 38. She said she was lured into the habit by her friends without knowing the implication. It was when she started her beer parlour business that she increased her smoking, and would finish three packets a day. She later progressed from three to 10 packets daily.

While doing this, she was also attending a Pentecostal church in Lagos, and continued until a member of the Lord’s Chosen preached to her. Today, she is a member of the Evangelism Group and now preaches to other people to repent.“I was in my shop smoking, when a sister from the Lord’s Chosen came and preached to me that I should attend their church,” Ndukanma recalled. “At that time, I didn’t know anything about the church, but I told her I was already attending a church. The second day, she came again and she said God instructed her to bring me. I repeated the same thing I told her the first time she came. But she insisted and said, ‘Sister, God loves you so much and my spirit has been telling me things about you.’ She continued until one day I asked her, ‘Are you going to handcuff me and bundle me to your church?’ She said the God that sent her to me would arrest me.

“When she left that day, I wasn’t myself. I started sobbing and thought about the things she told me. After closing that day, I took about three packets of cigarette to my house. I used to smoke Indian hemp and cigarette, though I wasn’t drinking. After smoking that day, I slept off and when I woke up, I realised that time had gone, but I still went to the bus stop where she told me to meet church members. On getting there, the bus had left. So, I went to Iyana-Iba and boarded a bus going to the church at Ijesha for the first time in my life.

“In all my life, I never wore any other thing than trousers. In my former church, I would smoke before going to church and after returning home. As I entered the church that day, the man of God was preaching. The next thing I heard was, ‘That woman sitting over there, you have been smoking for years. I bound that spirit of smoking in your life in Jesus Name.’

“I felt something like a sensation running through my body and immediately, something left my body. The next thing I experienced was that I felt cold all over. After returning home that day, I didn’t feel the urge to smoke, and even when I perceived the odour of cigarette, I would feel like vomiting. Nobody told me to change my line of business. I destroyed everything in the shop.” Ngozi, who is single and ready to marry when she meets the right man, hails from Imo State. She sells clothes at Alhaji Jimo Close, Igando, Lagos.