The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Betta Edu says her nomination as a minister was an answer to her late last year prayer at Shiloh 2022.

Shiloh, a yearly event by the Living Faith Church better known as Winners’ Chapel, attracts millions of Christian faithful in and around the country and is held in the first week of December.

While recounting her experience in the 2022 edition of the six-day programme, Edu said the Presiding Bishop of the Living Faith Church David Oyedepo had prayed about her desire to become a minister in the country.

“Church praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!! My name is Dr. Betta Edu and I came to thank God,” she said on Friday’s Hour of Visitation at the Canaanland premises of the Winners’ Chapel in the Ota area of Ogun State.

“Last year at Shiloh 2022, I prayed and told God that by the next time I come for the next year’s Shiloh, I want to be a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

On the last day of Shiloh, just as I was walking out, I saw Papa, Bishop David Oyedepo, and I went to greet him and meet him as usual and I whispered to him, ‘Papa, I need you to pray for me. I have just one prayer request now’. And he said, ‘What is it?’ I said, ‘I want to come back to Shiloh 2023 as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’. He put his hand on my head and he said, ‘It is done’. I stood up and I left.

“I came today to return all glory to God that in spite of all odds, today I’m a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. One of the youngest in the Fourth Republic.

“People of my age, are not at the Federal Executive Council of Nigeria in this Fourth Republic. But today, I can boldly stand here to say, ‘God did it’. I came to return all glory to God.”

Edu was among the ministers screened and confirmed by the Senate in early August. At 37, she is one of the youngest ministers in President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet and was until her appointment the National Women Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

 

Mrs Edu, a medical doctor, while giving testimony at the ongoing Shiloh programme of the church on Friday morning, said she approached Mr Oyedepo at the Canaan Land, Ota, Ogun State international headquarters in 2022 to pray for her in her desire to be a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

She was the first to testify among five testifiers during the session held after Yinka Folorunsho, a pastor, ended his preaching.

Mrs Edu, 37, was inaugurated as minister by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on 21 August 2023. Before her appointment, she was the national women leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

She had also served as commissioner for health in her native Cross River State in the administration of former Governor Ben Ayade. Before then, the graduate of the University of Calabar, was special adviser to the governor on community and primary healthcare.

As health commissioner, Mrs Edu was the national chairperson of the Nigerian Health Commissioners.