At just two years old, Apostle Chidiebere George was abandoned by his biological mother and left in the care of his aged maternal grandmother. Twelve years later, after enduring untold hardship in a desperate search to find the mother he had never truly known, he was met not with the embrace he had longed for but with painful rejection by his mother who was already remarried. Those heartbreaking experiences became some of the defining moments of a life that would later be transformed by God’s amazing grace.

Today, at 60, the General Overseer of Liberation Assembly Church International stands as a living testimony to the redemptive power of Christ. From a childhood marked by abandonment and poverty to a reckless youth consumed by wealth, alcohol, and worldly pleasures, his journey seemed destined for tragedy. Yet, through the unwavering love, patience, and prayers of his wife, coupled with a divine encounter that changed the course of his life, God rewrote his story.

In this exclusive interview with Christian Benefits Magazine marking his recent 60th birthday celebration, Apostle George reflects on his painful upbringing, the trauma of being rejected by his own mother after years of searching for her, his dramatic encounter with Christ, his call into ministry, and the extraordinary grace that turned a life of rejection into a powerful testimony of redemption. Below are some excerpts from the emotion-ladden interview.

How do you feel clocking 60?

I feel great! At some point in my life, I thought I wouldn’t live to see 50 because of the kind of life I lived when I was in the world. I told my wife a couple of times that I might not live up to 50. One of my greatest regrets in life was not knowing Christ earlier. If I had known Him earlier, I wouldn’t have made most of the mistakes I made. I thank God that, after all, I eventually found myself serving in His vineyard.

Will you specifically describe the kind of life you lived before you met Christ?

My story is one that proves that God can use anybody, no matter who they were before they met Him. In the end, He will even lift you beyond your expectations.While I wouldn’t want to go into the full details, I lived life in the fast lane when I was in the world. In summary, I wasn’t a good person. I was involved in questionable business. Initially, I worked in the financial sector.

From there, I ventured into private, ungenuine business for years. I was making millions of naira but squandered the money on women and all manner of wrong pursuits until I had an encounter with Christ.

Share with us how you eventually had an encounter with Christ.

My wife played a very vital role in my encounter with Christ during those ugly days. Despite my wayward lifestyle, she encouraged me. She never raised her voice at me. I used to be a very hot-tempered person, yet she calmly stood by me.

She understood the kind of person I was then and adjusted her own behaviour to accommodate me.I always went on drinking sprees with friends, often staying out late into the night. Most times, I returned home around 2:00 a.m. on a daily basis. Many times, I came home very late at night with friends in a convoy. She would wake up and cook food and pepper soup for all of us at those odd hours without any complaint or argument.Although she never complained, I often felt guilty about the way I was treating her. She was already rooted in Christ. I attended church occasionally because of her, but I was not really a church person then.

There was a time her church organised a revival programme, and she invited me to attend. I returned home around 11:00 p.m. that day, and she was still waiting for me so we could attend the programme together. When she reminded me about it upon my return that late at night, I was already drunk. She gently reminded me that I had promised to attend. So, I kept my promise and went with her to the programme, despite the late hour.It was an open-air revival meeting. When I got there and sat down, I was reeking heavily of alcohol. I started dancing frantically even after the music had stopped. I was dancing wildly and completely out of tune. As I danced, the smell of alcohol filled the air around me. Before long, the people sitting beside me began relocating their seats elsewhere. Everyone close to me moved away because I was drunk and smelling of alcohol.

My wife remained the only person sitting beside me after everyone else had left.That was the night I gave my life to Christ. After I gradually regained my senses at the programme, I became deeply convicted. I came back to my senses from my drunken state without anyone specifically preaching to me.

Nevertheless, I continued with my fast-lane business until one day I walked into my wife’s boutique on Unity Street, Ikeja. By then, my wife had already been ordained as a pastor, so her fellow pastors often visited her boutique. Some of the men of God who visited frequently told me that God’s call was upon my life.Whenever they said that, I became angry. Becoming a pastor was the last thing I wanted because, back then, I saw pastors as poor people who were always moving from one office to another, begging for money. Every time they told me that God’s call was upon my life, I reacted angrily.

My wife was spiritually gifted. Crowds of people regularly visited her boutique for counselling. At a point, because of the constant influx of people, I drove the counsellees and the staff out of the boutique and shut the place down because that was not the purpose for which I had opened the boutique for her. My wife did not resist my decision to shut down the boutique. That is why I always say she played a very vital role in my salvation. She was instrumental in my answering God’s call into the ministry.

How did you eventually respond to the call into ministry?

When different men of God kept telling me that God had called me into ministry, I finally said to them, “If God is truly speaking to you about me, then let Him speak to me directly. I want to hear from Him myself.” As time went on, God began to deal with the very things I trusted in—my business, my financial support system, and everything I depended on. I started having police cases and spent millions of naira trying to get myself out of one problem after another. Gradually, everything around me began to collapse. Eventually, I didn’t even have a kobo left in my bank accounts. I shared my predicament with a particular man of God, and he told me that all these things were happening because I was resisting God’s call upon my life. But I still insisted that God had to speak to me personally before I would be convinced that He had truly called me. Things continued to deteriorate to the point where I almost lost my life. But for God’s mercy, I wouldn’t be alive today. Then, one day, I had a life-changing encounter. The Lord appeared to me and said, “Look, you are still alive today because you are important to Me.”When I woke up, I was trembling. That very morning, I called my wife and told her, “I am going to Bible school.”She was completely shocked. She exclaimed, “George, you are going to Bible school?” She thought I was joking until I left home that same morning and registered at Word of Faith Bible Institute (WOFBI).That was how the journey began in 2000, and I was subsequently ordained into ministry as a pastor.

Please, share with us about your upbringing before the call.

That’s another story entirely. I grew up without my parents. I was raised by an old woman; my maternal grandmother. The story of my upbringing is an emotional and pathetic one that I wouldn’t want to delve into in detail. My grandmother single-handedly raised me without any support from anyone.

I’m from a family where everyone is on his or her own once you are not from the same womb. My grandmother survived by picking palm kernels from the forest to single-handedly raise me. Through that, I managed to finish my secondary school education.

Prior to this, during the Biafra War, I was two years old when my biological mother remarried a Hausa man and left me with my grandmother. Apart from me, whom she had for my late father, whom I never saw all my life, my mother had about seven other children from her second marriage to the Hausa man.

When I was 14 years old and in secondary school, I came across a letter my mother had written from Kaduna, where she was then living with her new husband. In that letter, which she addressed to my grandmother, she asked about her son who was in my grandmother’s care. I had never seen or known my mother until I travelled to Kaduna at the age of 14 to trace her. I got her residential address in Kaduna from the letter she wrote to my grandmother.

I started doing labourer and other menial jobs from the age of 10. So, I saved up some money from my labourer job to pay for my transport to Kaduna to look for my mother at the age of 14. I travelled from Umuahia to Kaduna in search of the mother I had never known or met. But I believed that once my mother saw me, she would recognise me and embrace me. On my way to Kaduna, when we got to Enugu, I discovered that pickpockets had stolen my wallet. Inside it were all the money I had with me, including the piece of paper on which I had written my mother’s address.

I didn’t realise my wallet had been stolen until the bus stopped in Enugu for passengers’ tickets to be checked. When I couldn’t produce my ticket, the bus conductors asked me to get down, and the journey continued without me.

I was left stranded, weeping, and completely confused. I didn’t know whether to continue the journey or return to Umuahia. Some sympathisers gathered around me. When I narrated my story to them, they were deeply moved. They contributed money among themselves and gave it to me so that I could continue my journey to Kaduna.

When I eventually arrived in Kaduna and got down from the bus, I became stranded once again. I no longer had the address of the place where I was going because it had been stolen along with my wallet. With nowhere to go, I slept at the railway station that night.

That one night eventually turned into two months. Since I had no idea where to begin my search, I remained at the railway station, begging on the streets of Kaduna just to survive. During that period, I became acquainted with some young boys who came to the railway station every afternoon after school to hawk bread. I often helped them run after passengers arriving at the station to sell their bread.

Gradually, we became friends. One day, their mother heard me speaking Igbo. She called me and asked, “Where are your parents?” I told her my story. She was deeply touched by what she heard. Since her family was also Igbo, she decided to take me into her home. That was how I became a member of her household. Every morning, I accompanied the family to the railway station and helped them sell bread. I had travelled to Kaduna in the search for my mother during the long school vacation. So I spent virtually the entire holiday searching for the mother I had never known.

Share with us how you eventually found your mother for the first time since she left you at the age of two in your grandmother’s care.

After spending close to three months searching for my mother in Kaduna, one particular day I saw a military officer standing by the roadside. I had been told that my mother’s husband was also a military officer. So, I summoned the courage to approach the officer and asked him, “Sir, I am searching for a military officer named Audu Ibrahim. Do you know him?”

He replied, “Which barracks? There are many barracks in Kaduna.” I told him I didn’t know.

He then said, “Well, I know an Audu Ibrahim, but I don’t know whether he is the one you are looking for.”

Immediately, I ran home and informed the woman who had taken me in. I told her I had met a military officer who knew someone bearing the name of my mother’s husband. She cautioned me that there were many barracks in Kaduna and that it might simply be a coincidence. Nevertheless, I asked whether the officer could take me to the Audu Ibrahim he knew. She agreed and asked her eldest son to accompany me. We returned to meet the officer, and he graciously agreed to take us there.

Unknown to all of us, God had already arranged everything. As it later turned out, the officer happened to be a neighbour of the very Audu Ibrahim I had been searching for. When we arrived at the house, the officer called out to the man’s wife and said that a young boy was looking for someone named Audu Ibrahim. The woman came out and asked me, “Who are you?”

I replied, “My name is Chidiebere George. I am looking for my mother’s husband, whose name is Audu Ibrahim.” The moment she heard my name, she screamed, “Chidiebere! What are you doing here?” She immediately recognised me as her son. Ironically, although she recognised me instantly, I had never known her or seen her before. I expected her to embrace me after all those years.

Instead, she began shouting at me. She kept asking, “Chidiebere, what are you doing here? Who gave you my address? If you know where you came from, go back there immediately!”

I was completely devastated. Her words pierced my heart like an arrow, and I burst into tears. After everything I had endured; the suffering, the hunger, the months of searching, and the hope that had kept me going, the mother I had longed to meet rejected me outright.

As she continued shouting and ordering me to leave, her husband, Audu Ibrahim, arrived home. By then, a crowd had already gathered around the house because of the commotion. When he was told what had happened and that my mother was driving me away, he called out my name, Chidiebere, in amazement. Unlike my own mother, he embraced me warmly. He asked me how I had managed to find their home, and I narrated everything that had happened; from my journey from Umuahia to losing my wallet, sleeping at the railway station, and finally locating them.

After listening to my story, he welcomed me into the house. That was how I eventually began living with my mother’s family. When the woman who had taken me into her own home heard that I had finally located my biological mother, she gladly released me to go and live with my family. Sadly, I remained in that house for only two weeks.

Why did your stay with your biological mother, after 12 years of separation, last only two weeks?

The two weeks I lived in my mother’s house were like living in hell. Throughout my stay, my mother would not allow me to take even a drop of water in the house. Every morning, as early as 4:00 a.m., she would wake me up with severe beatings for no reason at all. She treated me so cruelly and mercilessly that I became desperate to return to Umuahia.

Her husband was completely helpless. He could not rescue me from the way she treated me because my mother was firmly in control of the home. He was a very gentle, quiet, and humble man, while my mother was extremely domineering. As a result, he had little or nothing to say about the wicked manner in which she treated me, even after I had travelled all the way from Umuahia in search of her, twelve years after she abandoned me as a two-year-old child.

What was your next step after leaving her house?

Of course, I returned to my grandmother in Umuahia. When I narrated everything that had happened during my search for my mother and how she had rejected and maltreated me after I finally found her, my grandmother almost collapsed in grief. She told me that she had been practically dead with worry because I had been away for so long without any news. She said she came back to life the moment she saw me return safely. She asked me why I had gone looking for my mother in the first place. She reminded me that for over twelve years my mother had never made any attempt to visit me or even ask to see me. Then she said something that has remained with me ever since. She said, “You were the one who went looking for your own trouble.” She advised me never to bother looking for my mother again since she obviously did not care about me. I accepted her counsel and continued my education in Umuahia until I completed my secondary school.

Unfortunately, when my grandmother eventually died, I found myself completely alone. She had been everything to me. With no one else to turn to, I decided to return to Kaduna once more in search of my mother. I told myself that if she rejected me again, I would then know what next to do with my life. When I eventually arrived in Kaduna and went to the barracks where they had lived, I was informed that the family had relocated to Minna, Niger State.

Once again, I was stranded. I had nowhere to go except to the home of the woman who had accommodated me during my first visit to Kaduna. By God’s grace, they were still living in the same house and were still selling bread at the railway station. When I shared everything that had happened to me, they gladly welcomed me back into their home. I became a member of the family once again. Her sons and I related as brothers, and they treated me as one of their own.