Apostle James Maina Nga’ng’a: Wealthy man of God with baffling past

The jury is still out there on what happened in Limuru when a driver of a Range Rover Sport car allegedly caused an accident that killed a woman, as fingers were pointed Apostle James Maina Ng’ang’a of Neno Evangelism Centre.

But the raging controversy and the suspicious manner in which police have handled the matter has generated public debate about what could have happened, and put the man of God in a spotlight, largely because it appears the truth has not been told.

The incident has also spotlighted Ng’ang’a again, five years after the 2010 incident when he created a scene as Kenyans were just about to make a decision that would alter the course of an entire nation.

They had to vote for a new Constitution that promised to deliver them to Canaan, and the pastor was among those who would converge for a campaign rally at Uhuru Park.

And as both sides of the campaign dug in, a section of respected clergy of the country lent their voice to this greatly important debate by holding one last mammoth prayer service at the historical grounds.

All the while hoping that their calls to the Almighty would be answered and the people would unanimously reject the proposed law. But before they prayed, one last entry into the grounds stole all the thunder from the heartfelt prayers from the inter-denominational gathering of religious men.

“You see us? You see us? We too have money...we are driving in cars that even ministers cannot afford!”

A sleek, spanking new Range Rover was making its way through the crowds that had gathered just below Uhuru Park’s main dais. The animated man had upped the ante. He wasn’t just talking about his big car. He was now jumping up and down the hood.

Beyond the veneer

A closer look revealed the individual was a pastor whose church, located within the Nairobi city precincts, is sanctuary to thousands of faithful, who on a weekly basis pay allegiance to his teachings by turning up for the sermons.

Eyes hid behind his trademark photo chromatic, prescription glasses, widely smiling as the momentum of his antics fed off the crowd’s energy culminating into a frenzy, Ng’ang’a was milking all the attention.

On this day, granted, the apostle broke no law, but under that veneer of a successful, prayerful man basking in the abundance his maker has provided, lies a complex, controversial individual most recently judged by the court of public opinion to be guilty of a vehicular killing. And the alleged weapon of choice? The same as that which he used to announce his arrival at Uhuru Park five years ago.

But Ng’ang’a’s story did not start five years ago. It goes back further than this. Back to 1989, where The Standard on Sunday encountered the first of a series of court mentions of the man in the annuls of Kenya’s justice system.

“James Maina Ng’ang’a had been brought from Nakuru remand cells and was facing theft charge. At Molo Police Station his brother gave him a letter telling him that it was Mwai who had given it to him. Mwai was also in police cells. His brother told him to take the letter to Mbugua to give it to mother Wamwea. He gave the letter to Mbugua. He did not know Mwai nor had his brother told him who Mwai was. The prosecution did not call James Maina Ng’ang’a to give evidence, nor was any explanation offered for its failure to do so. Apart from the break in the chain of evidence in the attempt to relate the letter to the appellants...” reads an excerpt from the Kenya Law, the Judiciary’s online case archive.

The then ongoing case was an appeal in a robbery conviction in which the apostle’s brother had been sentenced to jail. The apostle, who had been brought as a defence witness, never showed up to give his side of the story and was never compelled by the courts to do so. The appeal was rejected by justices Cockar, Tunoi and Gachuhi.

Ng’ang’a has on several occasions given his testimony as a jailbird to his congregation.

Details of arrest and nature of crimes committed, however, remain scanty, and over the years he would be found either on the wrong side of the law or in the grey areas bordering right and wrong.

His wife, who had filed for divorce, paints a grim picture of the man. “He was a drunkard and very abusive towards me, to the extent of insulting my parents. I also later learnt that he was adulterous, sleeping with staff and even bringing married women to our matrimonial bed,” Loise Murugi Maina claims in an array of accusations contained in the couple’s divorce papers.

The couple married in 2012 at the prestigious Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club at an invite only wedding which was later beamed on national.

The kisses he lavishly planted on his young wife’s cheeks and lips faded. And where love once blossomed, bile now boils.

Psychiatrists say individuals who had a tumultuous childhood and formative years may tend to exhibit arrogance and little respect for authority.

Ng’ang’a has on several occasions spoken about his hard past that included stints in jail and a struggle to eke out a living as a hawker in the city streets.

“Such kind of personalities never deal with issues from their past. They shot to fame through no one’s assistance so they only pledge allegiance to themselves. They believe they are self-made. In order to prevent slipping back into a life of want and need they hoard power and crave absolute control,” psychiatrist Loice Okello says. According to the psychologist, most of such individuals have a criminal conscience with no concept of shame.

Might he just be misunderstood?

“The trouble is everyone commenting about this issue has ulterior motives. The focus is on him because he is an apostle with a certain past. Each one of us has our own weaknesses,” says Pastor Mike Brawan from Nakuru. Does he know Ng’ang’a to be a good man?

“I know him as he knows me...a human being.” Brawan was a groomsman in the apostle’s wedding.

wealth of Gospel

Sometimes, an outsider sees the absurdity of what society passes as normal.

In 2005, Jason Beaubien, a Nairobi-based reporter for the National Public Radio, a privately and publicly funded non-profit media organisation, walked into Neno Evangelism Centre to get a piece of the famed apostle’s wisdom. These were his first impressions: “Much of the focus of Ng’ang’a’s service is on healing, on driving out demons. The other main topic is economic prosperity. Ng’ang’a recounts his own personal tale of being a street child, spending years in prison, being saved and proselytising on a bicycle. He went from being an impoverished, wicked criminal, he says, to a successful preacher. He boasts that the new car he’s buying costs Sh20 million and he tells the congregation that he’s one of the richest pastors in Kenya.”

Back to the recent incident. Somewhere in a Limuru village a family has had a daughter taken away from them. A husband, bruised and in pain physically and emotionally, has had a wife erased from his side. A daughter will never see her beloved mother again. To quote the apostle’s sermon, ‘an enemy stole from them.’ Will God give them back the life they lost?

For now, the prisoner from 1989, the man who in 1992 started an evangelical movement, the man who in his own words confessed in 2005 to being among one of the richest evangelical pastors of all time, the man who in 2010 stole the thunder from a gathering of religious men, the man who in 2012 got married in a much publicised wedding that a few years later ended in an equally publicised divorce case, the man who in 2015 is being accused in  the public opinion court of vehicular manslaughter will today preach to a fully packed audience.

Over the past few days, Ng’ang’a, through his lawyers, has denied ever being part of any accident on July 26. But multiple witnesses who have spoken to the media have placed the 63-year-old apostle at the scene.

After going to social media and offering what is now a disputed chain of events surrounding the accident, Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinett later issued a statement ordering a fresh probe into the accident.

“In response to the mass of information provided by the public to the media that suggested the information given by the traffic police officers at Tigoni may not be entirely correct, I dispatched a team to the scene to verify the same,” Boinnet said in a statement.

The report has been handed back to the IG and he studies it, today, it will be business as usual at the pastor’s church in Nairobi, and several other satellites around the country.

The 1989 jail term seems a distant, perhaps more peaceful past for the man who has dominated the news for close to two weeks now.