THREE THINGS I DID WHILE I WAS IN PRISON- OBASANJO.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Sunday narrated his prisons experience and declared that he did three things while he was in Yola and Kirikiri prisons serving a jail term for a phantom coup charges by the late military dictator, Sani Abacha.
He also said there should be no position that a man should find himself in life where he should not be useful to God.
He also posited that the major challenge in life was not how to stay alive but “what to live for and what to live with.”
Obasanjo said this while recalling his experience as an inmate in Yola Prison where he said he met a hardened armed robber and serial murderer, Baba Ali, who he preached to and later sent to the bible school and who has today become a pastor over a Baptist Church.
The ex-President spoke at Shepherdhill Baptist Church, Obanikoro, Lagos, where the Lagos State Baptist Conference held a thanksgiving service to mark his 80th birthday.
The programme was tagged, “Special Commemorative, Commendation and Congratulatory Birthday Service.”
Recalling his time as an inmate, Obasanjo said he did three remarkable things, which were that he built a church while in prison; started a farm, converted Baba Ali to a Christian and served as prison pastor.
He narrated, “There’s a difference between joy and happiness. In prison, I had joy but it will be madness for me to say that when I was in prison I was happy. How can you be in prison and say you are happy? But I was having the joy of God with me, not for one day was I sad. And I am grateful to God for the experience that I had in the prison.
“I will mention three things that God made me to do when I was in Yola Prison. One, God made me to build a church. It’s very unusual, I asked the authorities for land, they were reluctant, but eventually they gave me land and immediately, we started getting donations. It was started before I left Yola. Wherever you are, you can still be useful to the work of God.
“Secondly, there was a parcel of land, which was not being used for anything, so, I told the prison authorities that I wanted to farm. They were reluctant but eventually they granted me the permission to farm and I grew enough beans to feed all the inmates and the warders. Don’t remain idle, get something doing.”
The third thing he did, Obasanjo said, was at Kirikiri Prison in Lagos where he took over as the prison pastor.
He said he took over as prison pastor because the prison authorities banned preachers from coming in after some white garments preachers who came to preach had helped some inmates to escape by dressing them in white garments.
He said, “They made sure we did not receive anybody from outside to come and preach to us or fellowship with us. So, I took over as the prison pastor. And there was a boy whom they had introduced to me, his nickname was Baba Ali. Baba Ali was the head of the armed robbers in the North. And if you were an armed robber and you came to the prison, you must first of all go and pay homage to Baba Ali. If you were going out, you must go to Baba Ali and ask him for instruction on what you had to do next.
“So, I called Baba Ali one day and said, ‘You are not coming to fellowship; I want you to be coming to the fellowship.’ He said, ‘Baba, don’t worry me; don’t worry me at all because God can never forgive me. I have killed so many