Ejike Mbaka, the outspoken Enugu-based Catholic priest who used his New Year’s message to call on Nigerian to vote out President Goodluck Jonathan, has alleged that the president and his wife, Patience, were planning to assassinate him.

Mr. Mbaka, who spoke to his teeming congregation at the Adoration Prayer Ground in Enugu, said the Mr. Jonathan might engage some unemployed youth to carry out the task.

“President Jonathan and his wife are planning to kill me,” he said to his visibly shocked followers in a video that has gone viral online.

“Although I sent a letter about this somewhere but I want to say this to the atmosphere. Let me say to the whole world that President Jonathan and his wife, Patience, are planning to assassinate Father Mbaka. It is a known secret, so whoever they want to use, I don’t know. They may not come themselves. They may use these unemployed people. The same people I am speaking for.

“I don’t know why people no longer have the fear of God. “Do they think that killing Father Mbaka will make Jonathan and his wife win the election? Is Mbaka their problem? And a priest asked a question that touched me. He said all this while that Father Mbaka has been supporting Jonathan and his wife, did Buhari and his party make any statement to threaten him?”

He likened Mr. Jonathan to the biblical Pharaoh who resisted all entreaties to allow the people of Israel go from captivity in Egypt to the promise land in Canaan. The cleric said he is the Moses sent by God to appeal to Pharaoh to listen to the word of God.

“I am just trying to tell any Pharaoh that is threatening to kill any Moses to remember what happened in Exodus: 12. After the Passover, the family of Pharaoh cried. They ended in the middle of the Red Sea.”

Mr. Mbaka, who was one of the most outspoken supporters of Mr Jonathan, denied that he ever collected money from the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, when she visited him in the past. He said her offering to the church was also turned down.

He alleged that the President sent him some money through the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, but he refused to touch it.