The Supremacy Battle

There were a lot of preachers in the Region, but in that part of town, there was a total influx. They were simply uncountable, with their buildings sometimes so close to each other it was often impossible to decipher where a sound came from. Their signboards seemed to compete with each other, as if it proved whose ministry was bigger. On the surface it seemed to be the only thing that betrayed the unwritten battle between them. The battle for dominance, superiority, largeness, wealth. That part of town boasted also of the most loud-mouthed. An unexperienced eye could often not tell what distinguished the one from the other.

 Interestingly four had managed to stand out among the rest. Kusi Appiah claimed his spiritual prowess was sharper than the functioning of the modern day computer. Joe Appah boasted that he needed but touch a person’s situation once for it to be solved, no matter what it was.

 Osofo Agyarko didn’t mention any names but often bellowed about the judgment the Lord was soon going to visit on all those heathen pastors parading falsely under the name Jesus. Everyone knew who he was referring to. There had been deep rivalry between those pastors for years, and people often claimed they were all trying to collapse the others church.

Joe Appah lived two towns away from where his church was located, a journey of about forty-five minutes. He had the youngest and arguably the prettiest wife, a fact he didn’t cease to mention any chance he got, with a good figure even after four children. He had four other children from a different marriage, all living with his new wife. Everyone knew his favourite was the youngest child from his previous marriage. He insisted on calling her with her own first name plus his first name, Esi Joe, which people thought to be quite funny. He could often be heard berating his current wife for not taking good care of the little girl, as soon as he noticed something wrong with her, from unkempt hair, dirty socks or a torn dress. “With all the money I spend in this house, one would think my daughter would be given good clothes to wear” he would yell. When Esi was rushed home from school one day for being ill, he had personally sent her to the hospital and allowed his assistant pastor to conduct the service that day. When he came back from the hospital, he simply told his household he had decided Esi was to go live with her mother.

The police arrested him two days later on his way home from church. Esi had confessed that he had molested her, and it had happened more than once. The news spread rapidly.

 Osofo Agyarko declared an all-white service; the Lord had exposed the evil people, he thundered. His wife collapsed, almost losing the baby she was carrying in her womb. Half of his church swore they had suspected something foul, and the people in his neighbourhood said they were sure he was doing this for rituals.

Joe appeared before court a week after he was arrested. His wife sat, hugely pregnant and weeping. His former wife sat flanked with her family and Esi, who seemed unable to fully understand what was going on. The doctors confirmed there were signs of her having been molested. She was asked one simple question

“Esi, who put his hands in your pants?”

“My daddy”.

His was a rather quick condemnation, sentenced to Twenty years in prison.

“Didn’t he say he could touch any situation?',Others mocked. When he said “God will judge if he was guilty’ the people almost lynched him but for the intervention of the police. What they didn’t understand was why a man with such a beautiful wife could go molesting his own child, if not for rituals

Prison was like an unexpected whiff of a very bad smell. He gave up trying to count the number of people in his cell. There were two rivalling opinions in the cell: one group believed he was a religious leader who should be allowed to have the little bit of ‘luxury’ prison offered, be allowed to share the only mattress in the cell with the head prisoner and the few old men. The other group believed he was a wicked man who had molested his child and deserved no privileges. The first group won and he was allowed to sleep by the head, but he moved the very next day to join the ‘popular stand’ which was the most crowded part of the cell when the head prisoner started touching him in the night sexually.

He started preaching in the cell, and soon won quite a respectable following. Nii Ayi had decided to be his assistant. The preacher had saved him the first day he arrived from a group of thugs who had attempted to rape him. They were part of his ‘church’ members who fortunately listened to him. They said they were still “repenting’ so the preacher should forgive them.

Nii had been an usher in Kusi Appiahs church and actually lived with him. He had been accused of theft, something he had denied. He told Joe he knew he was innocent. He was privy to the plot made by Kusi which had brought him to jail. What Joe had not known was that his ex-wife was a distant relative of K. Appiah and when he had left her and remarried she had waited patiently to do something to him.

 Esi had been molested, but she had told her mum it was the security man. She had shut her up and told her to say it was her daddy since ‘her daddy did not love her and had sent her away from his home’. Nii’s boss found the money just three weeks after his incarceration and filed to have him released, without a clue the new turn of events at the prison.His arch enemy had become friends with one of his own. Nii was one of those people who never forgot a good deed done him and he swore to get Joe’s case reopened.