The Senior Pastor of the Fountain of Life Church, Jimmy Odukoya, has revealed that his decision to maintain his dreadlocks was divinely instructed.
During a sermon, the cleric recounted how he sought guidance from God about his appearance before assuming leadership of the church following the passing of his father, Pastor Taiwo Odukoya.
“Before I came back, one of the things I asked the Lord was whether or not I should cut my hair. And the Lord told me not to cut my hair,” he said.
He mentioned that his sister had initially expressed concerns over how his hairstyle might be perceived by the public. However, he encouraged her to seek God’s direction as well.
“I knew what God had said to me so I told my sister to go pray and that God will speak to her. She goes back and told me I wasn’t supposed to cut my hair, to which I replied, ‘I know, because God already told me.’”
During the same sermon, Odukoya also shared a powerful encounter with a woman who travelled from Zimbabwe to attend a church service in Nigeria. He said the woman had a profound vision years earlier involving a man who resembled him, despite not knowing of his existence at the time.
“A couple of weeks ago, someone had come to see me all the way from Zimbabwe just to come to church. I said please bring the lady in and she begins to tell me her story,” he said.
“She says, ‘People think I’m crazy. I told everybody I am coming to Nigeria for the next three to four weeks. I’m just coming to church’.
“She says, ‘It was 2016, I was in New York, it was Thanksgiving and I had a vision, it felt so real. In this vision, I see you with your hair and you’re speaking to me and I have been dealing with some things in my life.
“There was this dog on my shoulder. I knew the dog represented the weight I was carrying and you had this long sword. You began speaking to me and it looked like thunder and lightning was coming out of the sword and it burnt the dog into ashes. And you began to declare over me and gave certain instructions’.
“She said, ‘Fast forward 2025, after that vision I went through a tough break-up, I lost everything in a divorce. My ex took the house.’ She said, ‘Everything I worked for… It was a tough time. To compound issues, my mom got sick and I watched her die in my arms’.”
Odukoya noted that the woman eventually turned to online sermons in her search for spiritual direction, leading to an unexpected moment of recognition.
“She said she was trying to find God so she went on YouTube to hear sermons. And all of a sudden my preaching popped up.
“And she said, ‘You don’t understand, because when I had this vision, I didn’t know you existed. The person I saw, I did not know it was a real person. So when I saw the man from the vision with a long hair I screamed. I didn’t know any pastor would have long hair.’”
What made the experience more remarkable for Odukoya was that he did not have long hair at the time the woman had the vision.
“The God who sees, hears and knows, knew at some point in February 2025, one of His children will have to see a man preaching. Guess what? If He did not ask me to keep my hair, I would have cut it,” he said.
“And when I popped up on the screen, she would have seen me with no hair and it would have meant nothing. God was making me keep my hair to save a life.”
