In 1996, when he was still a child, Dr. Godwin Adeboye lost his biological father and grandfather on the same day, at the same hour. Neither death was caused by an illness or an accident. No one ever fully explained what happened. People offered different interpretations, leaving a young boy with more questions than answers.
The experience stayed with him. Adeboye had been particularly close to his grandfather, a respected community leader who hosted faith groups and held meetings with religious and community leaders. Adeboye was often present, listening to conversations about faith, culture, tradition, and leadership that few children would have had the opportunity to hear.
What began as a child’s questions about life, death, and God eventually became something much larger: a lifelong commitment to understanding how people make sense of the world—and how those understandings can either contribute to conflict or help build a more just and peaceful society.
A Conviction for Healing and Clarity
Adeboye initially intended to become a medical doctor. But in 2009, he says, he became convinced that there was another kind of healing Nigeria desperately needed. “I received a conviction that the foundation of any humane, peaceful, and just society is critical, objective thinking,” he recalls, “and that theological clarity is central to building that society.”
Today, Adeboye is a theologian, researcher, teacher, and advocate whose work crosses boundaries that are rarely crossed so deliberately. His academic interests include theology, philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, and missiology, but his work increasingly takes him beyond the classroom and into villages and communities affected by violence.
He founded the Theo-Sight Institute for Research and Advocacy to bring research, documentation, and public advocacy together in an indigenous Nigerian effort to understand and respond to violence and human rights abuses. The name captures something fundamental about his approach. “Theo” brings the perspective of faith. “Sight” means clarity. For Adeboye, faith should not replace evidence. It should compel people to seek truth more carefully.
Theo-Sight therefore gathers community-based, verifiable, and auditable data, documenting violence and listening to those who have experienced it firsthand. The goal is not simply to produce another report. It is to create a body of knowledge that can inform policy and, eventually, help shape a different future for Nigeria.
The Power of Rigorous Documentation
His inspiration partly came from an unexpected source: Karl Kumm, a pioneering missionary and scientist who documented interreligious encounters in Nigeria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kumm recorded violence, kidnapping, slavery, religious demographics, places, and people in remarkable detail.
Studying Kumm convinced Adeboye that documentation could be more than historical record-keeping. “It taught me that the best advocacy is built on rigorous, objective documentation of violence,” he says. “Data-driven advocacy has significance beyond the moment. It gives clear understanding to generations yet unborn.”
But for Adeboye, rigorous data is only half the equation; there is another kind of evidence he considers equally important: the testimony of ordinary people. He describes human experience and context as a second “text” for theologians to study alongside the Bible and the Qur’an. Too often, he argues, religious institutions and scholars focus so heavily on sacred texts and hierarchical interpretations that they overlook the lived experience of the people they are meant to serve.
That can be especially damaging for communities that have experienced violence. “People affected by violence and conflict” are sometimes never truly listened to, he says. “It is a double trauma.”
The Trauma of the Unheard
Over the past year and a half, Adeboye has spent considerable time interviewing victims and survivors of violence in Nigeria. He expected that revisiting painful experiences might re-traumatize them. Instead, he frequently found something else. People were relieved to have someone listen. “They were healed simply because someone gave them quality time to listen to them with respect,” he says.
Rachel Omole
That conviction, listening is itself a form of advocacy, has become central to his work. One case that has stayed with him involves Rachel Omole, the wife of Rev. Omole in Kwara State. In March 2026, she and seven other members of her congregation were kidnapped during a church service. After months in captivity, five of the eight were killed, even though the church paid a ransom of 20 million naira. Rachel was among those killed, and her husband has still been unable to recover her remains.
What Adeboye remembers most is something her husband told him during an interview. It would have been easier, the pastor said, to campaign publicly for the rescue of his wife and the other hostages if his wife had not been among them. If the victims had been strangers, his advocacy might have appeared selfless. Instead, he was personally caught inside the tragedy.
For Adeboye, the story illustrates a larger challenge: those who are not directly affected must be willing to speak for those who are. Behind every statistic is a person, a family, and a community. And statistics themselves can become contested. Official figures may differ from accounts coming from affected communities or even from kidnappers themselves. Political debates can become consumed by arguments over how violence should be characterized or counted. Meanwhile, widows, widowers, displaced families, and survivors are left living with the consequences.
Building an Interreligious Front
Adeboye wants the conversation to move beyond competing narratives. His research suggests that violence in Nigeria is multifaceted. Religion can be a significant factor, but it is not the only one. Economics, politics, history, and ethnicity intersect with religious identity in complicated ways.
That complexity is one reason Adeboye places such importance on relationships across religious boundaries. Theo-Sight works with Christian and Muslim communities, researchers, community leaders, media organizations, and government agencies. Adeboye has also deliberately engaged Muslim colleagues in conversations about interreligious advocacy and human rights.
He does not see this as an attempt to erase theological differences. Instead, he wants to build what he calls an “issue-based interreligious front”—people working together on questions of human dignity, justice, and peace rather than beginning with their doctrinal differences.
“I love crossing boundaries and finding the positive on the other side,” he says. “I build bridges. I don’t dwell on differences.”
That philosophy extends to his understanding of Christian ministry. His work among survivors has changed the way he thinks about what it means to serve. “Ministry does not have to mean preaching to Christians,” he says. “Christian ministry can mean speaking for peace, development, humanity, and justice for everyone—Christian or Muslim.”
Closing the Gap Between Research and Policy
For Adeboye, that broader understanding of ministry is inseparable from his vision for Nigeria. He wants Theo-Sight to build an indigenous database of violence and human rights abuses so rigorous and trusted that policymakers cannot easily ignore it. He wants research to move beyond academic shelves and into government decisions. And he wants Nigerians—and their leaders—to become more comfortable with facts, evidence, and critical thinking.
There is a long way to go. But Adeboye remains hopeful. Nigeria, he says, possesses extraordinary human and material resources. Its academic community has significant capacity. What is missing is often the connection between research and policy, between what communities know and what decision-makers hear. Theo-Sight is his attempt to help close that gap.
The journey began with a child’s unanswered questions about two unexplained deaths. It led through theology, philosophy, Islamic studies, and years of research into the lives and beliefs of people across Nigeria. Now it has brought Adeboye into communities where people have endured kidnapping, displacement, and loss.
He is still asking questions. But the questions have changed. They are no longer simply about why suffering happens. They are about what people can learn from it, how their stories can be honored, and what might change if those stories are taken seriously.
Adeboye believes Nigeria’s future does not have to be defined by violence. He believes it can be defined by sound thinking. And perhaps, at the heart of his work, is the conviction that seeing clearly begins with being willing to look and to listen to what is actually in front of us.
Theo-Sight Institute and 21Wilberforce Partnership:
The Theo-Sight Institute for Research and Advocacy is a Nigerian research institute specializing in advocacy research, human rights, social justice, and countering violence through data-driven interventions. Theo-Sight collects and analyzes data on religiously motivated violence, crimes, and insecurity while collaborating with churches and NGOs to strengthen documentation, research, and advocacy.
The institute is led by Founder and Director Dr. Godwin Adeboye, a Nigerian theologian, Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) minister, and research expert specializing in grounded theory, historical missiology, religion and human rights, religious violence, and ecological sustainability. 21Wilberforce partners with Dr. Adeboye and the Theo-Sight Institute to support their vital documentation efforts, advance human rights, and strengthen locally rooted advocacy across Nigeria.
September 12, 2026