Pastor Charles Osazuwa: A Man Of God Extending His Divine Calling To Sports Sponsorship

Special Report by IKPO IGBINOBA 

In Benin City, Pastor Charles Osazuwa is a household name. He has carved a niche for himself in the realm of evangelism. 

But beyond winning souls for the Lord, the Pastor of Rock of Ages Christian Assembly, also has a reputation for touching and transforming lives through several philanthropic gestures.

Residents of the Edo State capital, where the Pastor lives attested to the noble deeds of the cleric in various interviews with me. 

However, the focus of this write-up is not about his noble deeds, rather it is about his emergence on the national stage as a sports sponsor. 

In January, Pastor Osazuwa stamped his identity on the nation’s sports firmament with the sponsorship of a Table Tennis tournament. 

From January 10th to 16th, Benin City with a rich sports heritage, thanks to the visionary administration of late Gen. Samuel Ogbemudia in the 1970s, was the table tennis capital of Nigeria.

The titans in the ping-pong game were all in the city to jostle for laurels and mouth-watering cash prizes in the first edition of the Pastor Charles Osazuwa Table Tennis Festival. 

In living memory, a championship of that magnitude has never happened in not just Benin City but in the entire South South geopolitical zone.

The Pastor Charles Osazuwa Table Tennis Festival was an all encompassing championship. 

It featured all the categories in  the able-bodied, the physically challenged and the deaf departments.

Apart from the players’ prize money which fuelled  fiercely contested games, officials who participated in the festival also had a memorable experience.

National Umpire, Niyi Oladipupo who was in Benin City as part of the festival gave his assessment in an interview 

“For a very long time, I have not witnessed a championship so well packaged. Every aspect of the championship was perfect; organisation, prize money and the welfare of all including officiating officials.

“Let me put it on record that the total prize money of N3,000,260,000 is the highest ever in the history of table tennis in Nigeria”

“In fact, a lot of us who were in Benin City for the event are already looking forward to the second edition even though it is almost a year away” Oladipupo added.

With such a sensational entry into the sports community, the name Pastor Charles Osazuwa understandably triggered some curiosity.

The Sports community was agog not just with excitement but also with questions about Pastor Osazuwa’s relationship with the game of table tennis.

“Is he a member of the Edo State Table Tennis Association? 

“Is he a member of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation? 

“Is he nursing an ambition to be on the board of the Table Tennis Association?  

These are valid questions by members of a community where Pastor Osazuwa’s name does not ring a bell in spite of his towering profile in the pentecostal community.

Oladipupo, who has been a member of the Table Tennis community for over three decades as a player, coach and an umpire provided the answers.

“Pastor Charles Osazuwa is a unique personality. He’s not a member of the Edo State Table Tennis Association and also not a member of Nigeria Table Tennis Federation.

“His only relationship with table tennis is that he has a passion for the game and he also plays it.

“To the best of my knowledge, he is not nursing any ambition to be a member of any sports association or federation”.

Indeed, Pastor Charles Osazuwa is a rare breed. For a man without any pecuniary interest or subterranean agenda to sponsor a sports event to the tune of over N10 million, the cleric wields the wand that should address the major challenge of Nigerian sports, Sponsorship.

For this reason and without further ado, Pastor Osazuwa should be wooed by the  authorities by being co-opted into the state association. There shouldn’t be a debate about that.

With what he did in just one championship, Pastor Osazuwa has dwarfed several men and women who are board members in sports associations and federations.

Majority of the so-called board members are cheap hustlers with nothing to offer their respective sports. 

They are the reason why Nigerian sports have refused to flourish in spite of the abundance of talents.

With Pastor Osazuwa and his ilk, there is still hope for Nigerian sports; they will boom again.