By Teniola Olarinde
Dr. Priscilla Otuya, the first elected and current president of the United Gospel Churches Association of Nigeria (UGCAN), speaks on the history, challenges, leadership crisis, and repositioning of the association in an interview with Christian Benefits.
She explains that UGCAN was founded by the late Archbishop Abraham Oyelakin Oyeniran during Nigeria’s military era to protect Christians’ rights and promote unity, predating bodies like CAN and PFN.
However, UGCAN later lost prominence as Archbishop Oyeniran focused more on establishing PFN nationwide.
Dr. Otuya recounts her spiritual upbringing, early supernatural encounters, and nearly four decades in Christian ministry.
She clarifies leadership succession issues, noting that after Archbishop Oyeniran’s life presidency, conflicts arose, leading to factions, gender and ethnic bias, and eventual breakaways.
She stresses that she inherited unresolved issues from the founder’s era rather than creating new conflicts.
She highlights Archbishop Oyeniran’s legacies—defending pastors’ rights, promoting peace, and civic engagement—while lamenting how many leaders abandoned him in his later years.
To preserve his legacy, she initiated the Abraham Oyeniran Memorial Annual Lecture, though it was later suspended due to misunderstandings.
As president for about 12 years, Dr. Otuya says her focus has been restructuring and reorientation, guided by divine instruction, to return UGCAN to its original spiritual vision.
She announces a major UGCAN Repositioning Conference scheduled for January 30, 2026, in Lagos.
The conference will address leadership failures, scandals in the church, lack of discipline, poor discipleship, women’s marginalization, youth empowerment, and faith-based socio-economic development.
Looking ahead, she says UGCAN’s renewal and reunification will be left largely to God, emphasizing alignment, integrity, and order over popularity.
She also outlines plans to re-engage civic and political spaces responsibly, not through patronage but by offering solutions and empowering pastors to understand their civic rights and responsibilities.
The UGCAN repositioning conference scheduled for January 30, 2026, was initiated to restore sanity, discipline, and biblical order within the Body of Christ.
The President explains that many practices currently prevalent in the church are foreign to the original Gospel of the Kingdom and have created room for abuse, disorder, and unchecked misconduct, often justified by false claims of divine instruction.
The conference aims to re-emphasize scriptural accountability, proper discernment, and lawful leadership, stressing that executive lawlessness will not be tolerated within UGCAN.
Dr. Otuya said the major driving force behind the conference is the erosion of genuine discipleship, which has been replaced by titles, certificates, and unstructured leadership formation.
According to the President, rebuilding UGCAN requires reorientation and a solid spiritual foundation, as the association cannot move forward on faulty principles.
Key issues to be addressed at the conference include recurring scandals within the church and their root causes, the marginalization and persecution of women, youth empowerment, and the need to adopt faith-based initiatives for socio-economic development.
The conference will also encourage the church to tap into the skills and expertise of members gifted beyond the pulpit.
On reunification, the President states that reconciliation will be left to God, with openness, forgiveness, and love extended to all. However, unity will be based on shared values and agreement, described metaphorically as operating from the “third side of the coin,” where alignment determines progress.
Post-conference, UGCAN intends to return to Christ-centered leadership rather than human strategies, trusting God to restore the association’s influence. The President emphasizes that her leadership will mark a visible difference, especially as a woman leading at the helm.
Regarding politics, UGCAN plans to engage constructively without compromising its values. Rather than seeking favors from government agencies, the association will collaborate by offering solutions, promoting nation-building, and advancing faith-based social enterprises, while empowering pastors to understand their civic rights and responsibilities as Nigerians.
