Popular Nigerian pastor’s porn addiction remedy enrages conservative Christians

Popular Nigerian pastor and founder of Abel Damina Ministries International, Dr Abel Damina, has been knocked for his comment on the remedy to porn addiction.

Damina gave his submission while speaking on Comfort FM’s Righteous Invasion of Truth (RIOT) programme in Uyo in late February.

The clip of the sermon made the rounds on Thursday where the pastor was asked how a person addicted to pornography could stop and get rid of it totally.

He advised such persons not to struggle to stop but should keep watching while listening to the word of God at the same time.

“Don’t struggle to stop watching the porn. Don’t struggle at all. Just keep watching the porn. As you are watching the porn, spend more time hearing the ‘word’. If you watch porn for one hour, spend three to four hours hearing the word of God.

“Take not. Go get all my teachings on Christ. Just keep learning and learning. After a while, you will find out that your appetite for porn is dying and the appetite for the word of God is growing. Before you know it, when you see porn, you will be irritated.

“Word of God will kill that appetite completely and give you a healthy appetite. That’s what to do. Don’t try to stop. In fact, keep watching, but spend more time studying God’s word, and you will find out that before you know it, your desire for porn would be gone,” the pastor stated.

However, this submission has been greeted by dissension, especially from conservative Christians on social media who believed that the pastor was encouraging people, mostly addicts, to sin.

A prominent pastor, Gideon Odoma of the Fortress Ministry countered Damina’s submission while labelling pornography as a perversion.

“Christains have trivialise sexcapades. The things God call iniquities, we must never call it flexing,” he said.

The pastor who had previously slammed Damina and Apostle Suleman for supporting the Old Testament over the New Testament remarked that both of them have wrong teaching and their objective is to derail the Christians.

“The Damina and Suleman terms are wrong. It as if their only objective in life is to derail believers so they have a lot of time on their hands and they find different creative ways to say the same useless things — Your sin does not matter — they find all sorts of ways to discredit as it were,” he said.

Another prominent pastor, Chris Oyakhilome, while quoting Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 15, submitted that pornography is a sin that should be avoided completely.

He emphasised that God recognised nakedness as a feeling of shame because pornography is synonymous with prostitution because it draws from Greek’s linguistic corpus —pony—meaning prostitute.

“The indication is that once nakedness is being made public, it is a shame when you’re not a child. As far as God is concerned, that is a shame.

“It started from Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden apple. Their eyes were open and they found that they were naked and then covered themselves with leaves and hid from God. Christians desist from it. Those who believe in Jesus should not do it,” he stressed.

Aside from Oyakhilome and Odoma, some other Christians are lending their voice to fault Damina’s sermon.

One Rachael, who tweeted with the handle, @ab_seyi wrote, “I am fighting tears. Lord help this man, help his followers, help him not to die like this. This is sad.”

Sandra Okafor with the handle, @okaforsandra20 said, “Even the Bible said ‘flee from every appearance of evil’. You can’t want to stop doing something and still be doing it, expecting a miracle to happen because you’re reading the word of God. As one of the cessation steps for smokers, they’re advised to throw away and move away from their triggers; be it the cigarette boxes, lighters, smoking partners, and smoking environment because you gradually become what you’re constantly exposed to. So this advice is biblically and also morally wrong.

“You’re supposed to throw away all triggers that make you want to watch porn and as you do your part, you ask the Holy Spirit to empower you and deliver you from its grip. It’s normal to stumble but thank God for the mercies of God that bring us back to Him.”

Nonetheless, while endorsing the contentious claim, Pastor Oge, the lead pastor of Cicle Church said he struggled with poor addiction in the early stage of his life and despite seeing a therapist to stop the act, it continued.

“Dr Damina’s Porn Remedy; I struggled with porn addiction in the early stages of my life and I can tell you categorically, the struggle doesn’t help.

“Saying ‘I won’t watch Porn again’, will not stop you! That’s why it’s called an addiction! I saw a therapist and the therapist said to replace the desire to watch porn with something else… Help my brain associate the porn triggers with something else,” he wrote on his X handle.

Oge further justified Damina’s sermon saying it was the biblical way of dealing with the addiction but that the pastor didn’t convey it well.

“What Dr Damina said is the Bible’s way to deal with addictions. He just didn’t say it well.”

A Facebook user with name, Restoration Arena also said, “I think the point he is trying to make is, a believer should not struggle with sin. Instead the believer should replace struggle with living the Word and walk in the Spirit. While that is done, sin appetite will die.”

“There is nothing wrong with what he said. All these people of little understanding, why judging him?” another user, Evangelist Precious said.

Chastising them for aligning with the proposition, one Wisdom Chiezugo with the handle, @Wchiezugo stated, “You guys are defending him because it’s what you want to hear. That’s not how God works. Read the scriptures for yourselves.

“Maybe when you bring one scripture that supports you to keep sinning and be reading the word together then I’ll engage you. In the meantime, Keep watching the porn.”

Damina is the CEO of Kingdom Life Network (KLN) – a Christian satellite TV channel.

He is also the Senior Pastor of Power City International headquartered in Uyo, Nigeria with extension campuses across the world.

He hosts the TV programme, Righteous Invasion of Truth (RIOT) on KLN as well as on other television and radio stations.