IN DEFENCE OF EVANG NAOMI BY EBENEEZER ADENIYAN; ‘The palace did not make Naomi. It only exposed her to the world and public scrutiny. She was doing well in her own right and did not go to that palace as a nobody’

I met Naomi for the first time sometime in 2016 during a press briefing she addressed ahead of a crusade she was planning for her church. Like many of my colleagues at that event, held at Sunview Hotel in Alagbaka, Akure, I was stunned by her beauty and gift of the gab. I remember asking my junior colleague, Sola Ilesanmi, who had insisted I attended the briefing, where he got her from.

Since then I have followed her activities and on December 29, 2017, my organisation, TRACE News Magazine, gave her the Young Woman of the Year award (Pictures here show her receiving that award from the then Speaker of the Ondo State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Jumoke Akindele and speaking afterwards).

I also remember that quite a number of prominent men present at that our event had approached me after the event to ask for her contact as all eyes were on her throughout that evening.

When I celebrated my 40th birthday on May 30, 2018, she was there as one of my guests and was the one who anchored the Prayer for the Celebrant. (Picture here shows her and her mother at my birthday in 2018).

Later that year, Evang. Naomi had followed a group of church leaders (CAN or PFN) to pay a courtesy visit to the Ooni of Ife. At that event, she was asked to lead a prayer and after listening to her speak, the Kabiyesi simply took interest. The rest is history.

Every marriage has its challenges. We are all human. That one is a king and the other is an evangelist does not mean they are immuned from what ‘ordinary’ people go through.

I have put this out to counter the warped narratives of some individuals who claim that Naomi was a nobody or a pauper before she married Ooni of Ife. Those who really knew Naomi before Ooni will know that she was a beautiful, elegant and brilliant young woman. Those were the qualities that attracted Ooni to her.

The palace did not make Naomii. It only exposed her to the world and public scrutiny. She was doing well in her own right and did not go to that palace as a nobody.

Whatever happened to the marriage is between the couple. Nobody is perfect.
I pray that God will intervene in the marriage.