Four years after its conception by some members of an Abuja parish of
the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a housing scheme for members of
the church has taken the appearance of a fraud in the hands of three
pastors and two sidekicks.
Just
as doctors occasionally need doctors when ill, pastors sometimes need
deliverance when in the grip of an affliction. Deliverance–from the
clutches of the law–is what Peter Imonhiosen, Adeola Oluwafemi Johnson
and Cosmas Mbanu, all pastors of the Redeemed Christian Church of God,
RCCG, currently need. Quickly. In the same boat with the pastors are Mr.
Sunday Adeagbo, a lawyer, and Mr. Femi Shobola. The five men were
arrested last month by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
EFCC, following a petition that accused them of diversion of funds paid
by church members for a housing scheme.
Back in 2009, members of
the Resurrection Chapel, a parish of the Redeemed Church of God in
Lugbe, Abuja, were presented with the prospect of owning property in the
Federal Capital Territory, FCT. The project was initiated by a group,
which calls itself Excellent Men Fellowship. The group kicked off the
process of acquiring plots of land from the Federal Capital Territory
Development Authority, FCDA, which has a series of mass housing
development schemes as a response to the acute accommodation shortage in
the country’s capital.
The Excellent Men Fellowship, EMF, which
is made up of adult male members of the Resurrection Chapel and led by
one Pastor Bisi Akande, urged the entire congregation to support the
scheme. Like prospectors at a gold rush, members jumped at the
opportunity. Financial contributions followed.
But before the
process was completed, Pastor Akande was transferred from the parish
during the routine transfer exercise of the RCCG. His successor was
Pastor Imonhiosen. Before Akande left the parish, he turned over the
bank statements for the contributions for the scheme to Imonhiosen.
Shortly after Akande’s departure, the FCDA granted approval for and
allocated parcel of land for an estate at Pyakassa in the Abuja
Metropolitan Area Council, AMAC.
Things were looking skywards.The
progress being made attracted members of other RCCG parishes in Abuja. A
bigger rush to benefit from the initiative followed. Intending
beneficiaries speedily made requisite payments into the account opened
by EMF for the purpose. Then came a hitch. The church was unable to take
possession of the land because of the demand of the original land
owners, the Gwari people in Pyakassa, for compensation for their farm
crops. This, though, was quickly resolved. By early 2010, the
acquisition was completed and the church called a meeting to give
members who had paid an update.
At the meeting, which held in
March, 2010, subscribers were told that each of them was entitled to a
plot measuring 600 square metres. They were also told that no member,
whatever his position in the church, would own more than one plot. This
was to ensure that the plots, to be allocated on first-come-first-served
basis, went round.
Each subscriber was to pay N250,000 net of
all taxes. Subscribers were directed to pay into an account at the
defunct Oceanic Bank (which has since been swallowed by EcoBank). The
account name was RCCG-RC-EMHS (Project), the acronym of Redeemed
Christian Church of God, Resurrection Chapel, Excellent Men Housing
Scheme. The account number was 0421701200113.
Within a short
time, the account started bulging with money. Other meetings on the
scheme were held at the Resurrection House along 21(F) Road, A Close,
Federal Housing Authority Estate, Lugbe, Abuja, where the project was
conceived and initiated.
That was as good as it got, as crisis
began to brew shortly after. Imonhiosen, under whose tenure the land was
handed over to the church, was transferred from Resurrection Chapel to
another parish. He was replaced by one Pastor Adeleye. Imonhiosen was
said to have been piqued by his transfer. Sources within the church told
this medium that Imonhiosen, abetted by Shobola, EMF President, and
Johnson, the chapel’s assistant pastor, who doubles as the Chairman of
the Resurrection Chapel’s Land Board, launched a plot to wrest the
control of the scheme from the church.
Church sources said the
handing over notes Adeleye got from Imonhiosen were devoid of
information on the scheme. Adeleye’s efforts to take over the
leadership of the scheme, as it is customary, were thwarted by Shobola
and Johnson.
Adeleye was angered by Johnson’s involvement in the
plot to take the scheme from the church and responded by sending him on
transfer to a “small” RCCG parish in the Kuje Area Council of the FCT.
It did not achieve Adeleye’s aim, as Johnson, Shobola, who still
remained at the parish, and Imonhiosen hung on to the scheme. Shobola
proceeded to register the scheme as Redeemer Excellent Men Housing
Foundation, an entity with trustees, at the Corporate Affairs
Commission. It was issued a Certificate of Incorporation No. CAC/IT/ NO.
0502. Shobola and his cohorts, naturally, emerged as members of the
Board of Trustees. This was done with neither the knowledge nor consent
of subscribers, whose contributions were used to procure the land. With
this move, the pastors and church leaders removed the project from the
control of the church.
Their whims began to dictate the direction
the project would take. The first sign of this came via the alteration
in the previously announced size of the plots. From the 600 square
metres initially promised, the size was reviewed to 500 square metres.
Initial
offer letters given to those who had paid the N250,000 were withdrawn.
Subscribers were told to return the letters to the EMF executive
council, which announced an upward cost review to N500,000.
Subscribers
were also directed to pay another N200,000, which was said to be 30 per
cent of estimated infrastructure levy. These directives left very
little wriggle room because it gave a deadline of 30 June, 2010, barely
one month after the changes were announced. Acceptance of the new terms,
subscribers were told, was to be sent to Johnson, Chairman of the Land
Board. This inevitably ensured that the control of the process was
effectively taken from the Resurrection Chapel, initiator of the scheme.
Despite not being a member of the parish any longer, he curiously still
retained his position as head of the project.
The fresh terms
and conditions notwithstanding, members hurriedly completed payment and
collected new offer letters dated 30 June 2010. Last year, Augustine
Eigbe, subscriber with File No. 0451, who left the RCCG in anger over
the matter, told TheNEWS that subscribers, who had completed their
payment and had been issued new offer letters, were taken to the land
for the first time towards the end of 2010. According to Eigbe, they
were informed that their plot numbers would be sent to them via sms on
completion of clearing, demarcation and identification of plots.
Eigbe
claimed that he expected the text message till sometime in April 2011,
when he was informed that some subscribers had received their plot
numbers through that medium and had even moved to site to commence
development. “I was shocked to hear from one of us that some people had
already moved to site and had started construction, while I was yet to
receive the sms for my plot number though I had completed my payment of
N1,030,000 and had been issued with all the receipts,” he said.
It
was the same with Mr. Oluyemi Ojudu, subscriber with File No. 0744.
Both subscribers as well as many others were excluded from the
allocation process. A worker in the church, who was neither given a plot
number nor allotted any plot despite completing payment, said: “My
brother, what can I do? As a worker in RCCG, I cannot take them to court
or even involve the police. It won’t speak well of us as members of the
church. I leave them to God and surely, God will expose them.”
His wish appears to have been granted.
In
2011, the pastors invited subscribers to another meeting, where it was
announced that the cost of the plot allotted had risen to N1.5 million.
The steep rise was attributed to what the pastors claimed was the high
cost of infrastructure facilities planned for the estate. All the former
allocation letters were again withdrawn, with a promise of reallocation
upon payment of the new rate.
Despite having been tossed up and
down in the past, subscribers retained hope and went to look for money
to meet the new terms to avoid losing out.
•The Toyota Hilux truck recovered from the sacked board and retained by the church after washing its hands of the housing scheme
•The Toyota Hilux truck recovered from the sacked board and retained by the church after washing its hands of the housing scheme
That
turned out to be the last time they would acquiesce to the demands of
the pastors. Upon full payment of the new rate–for the plots already
reduced by 100 square metres–many subscribers were denied allocation of
plots on the excuse that the plots on the estate had been exhausted. It
did not escape subscribers’ attention that non-members of their parish
and persons not involved at the beginning were allocated plots after
paying N4 million per plot. At that time, the pastors had decided to
sell the land at a commercial rate. Those willing to pay N4 million were
said to have been allocated more than a plot each, with payments going
into an entirely new account opened by the pastors.
The pastors
and their cohorts justified this with the claim that they had to sell
some of the plots at the commercial rate to enable them fund
infrastructural development on the estate. They explained that members
whose plots were not reallocated to them would be considered first in
another scheme that was in the pipeline.
At one of the meetings
between subscribers and the management committee, Pastor Johnson
informed them that his committee had spent N162 million on the estate.
He claimed that N80 million went into the acquisition of the land, while
N82 million was expended on perfecting the title. These claims were not
accompanied by any proof.
On the sale to non-RCCG members at the
commercial rate–at the expense of fully paid up original
subscribers–Johnson told his audience that his committee spent N300
million on the provision of roads, boreholes and erosion control.
Evidence on the site declined to support these claims.
He then
pushed his luck too far when he told allottees that they entered into a
contract with the management committee upon the acceptance of their
allocation papers and warned them against speaking to the press on
matters relating to the estate. He then told those who believe they have
better ideas in the management of such a scheme to go and set up
theirs.
With that, subscribers flew into rage, yelling and
violently demanding evidence in support of the claims made, especially
that of infrastructural development.
The matter spilled into public domain via the press.
Following
media reports, the General Overseer of RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye,
dispatched a team led by one Pastor Pitan Adeboye from the church’s
headquarters to investigate the matter and audit the accounts of the
project.
To the subscribers’ chagrin, the investigative panel
did not invite them. They were also not issued audited reports of the
scheme’s accounts or copies of the panel’s investigation report.
The
panel was said to have met with only the pastors and worked with their
narration of events. Upon the presentation of the report of the panel to
Adeboye, the General Overseer recommended, among others things, the
suspension of the “management committee” or “Board of Trustees” of the
scheme and the borrowing of money from a financial institution to make
refund to those who paid but got no plots.
Adeboye also directed that a caretaker committee be set up to take over the management of the scheme.
The
leadership of the church in the North implemented Adeboye’s directives
and set up a caretaker committee under the leadership of Pastor Amos
Dele Babade, Provincial Pastor of FCT Province 4, with Mr. Sule Paul, a
legal practitioner and church leader, as secretary.
With the
sacking of Imonhiosen, Johnson and their gang members, the caretaker
committee recovered some of the scheme’s properties. These include a
brand new Toyota Hilux truck, certificate of incorporation used to
severe the scheme from the church as well as documents relating to the
project land and bank statements.
However, the caretaker
committee displeased subscribers when it announced that funds had been
sourced to pay off those who missed out on plots, as directed by
Adeboye. Subscribers angrily asked how the borrowed funds would be
repaid and by whom since the church had washed its hands off the scheme.
They also wanted to know how money realised thus far was spent by the
sacked board before real progress could be made. They feared that
successful subscribers at the housing scheme would later be asked to
contribute more money for the repayment of the loan and as such,
demanded to know how and where the funds were sourced and at what terms
such would be repaid.
This necessitated another meeting, which
was attended by a Deputy Inspector-General of Police from the Force
Headquarters, who was invited by the caretaker committee to forestall
the outbreak of violence.
At the meeting, the caretaker committee
explained how members of the ousted management committee frustrated its
efforts to resolve the crisis by their introduction of an outstanding
bill of N75 million, which they claimed were owed to contractors for
work done on the estate. The new bill was submitted by Imonhiosen’s team
after the caretaker committee said it had secured N40million for the
reimbursement of those who completed payment, but were not given plots.
The
caretaker committee accused the sacked board members of deliberately
frustrating the church’s genuine efforts to take over and resolve the
issues at the scheme and suggested the arrest of Imonhiosen and his
gang.
The police duly obliged. But upon their arrest by policemen
from the Lugbe Police Station, the caretaker committee handed back all
the recovered items, including bank documents, to the sacked board
without any explanation.
This irked the subscribers, who accused
the church leadership of abetting the pastors. Thereafter, the
subscribers set up a committee to fight their corner. The subscribers’
committee challenged the caretaker committee’s handling of the issues
and demanded a copy of the investigation report as well as the audited
report sent from the church’s headquarters.
Threats of legal action followed, prompting a disclaimer from the church.
•Another
section of the estate. Where are the infrastructural developmentOn 15
May 2013, the disclaimer published in THE PUNCH warned the general
public that RCCG Region 10 has no hand in the Redeemer Excellent Men
Housing Foundation (the new name the project was given) and warned that
the church has no liability for the activities of the operators of the
scheme. The disclaimer, signed by Sule Paul’s law firm, also warned that
the use of the name of RCCG on the letterhead and receipt of the scheme
as well as on the signboards of the scheme’s various sites, was done by
the operators in their bid to misinform the public. The church,
however, kept the Toyota Hilux truck it recovered from the ousted
committee.
It was on account of the dissatisfaction with the way
the church leadership has handled the matter that some subscribers
petitioned the EFCC. The petition, signed on behalf of over 200
subscribers by their lawyer, Rotimi Adalumo, accused the ousted board of
embezzling about N600 million through series of accounts opened and
managed by Pastor Johnson and his friends.
It called on the EFCC
to compel them to render full and detailed account of their stewardship
from 2009, when the scheme came into being, and retrieve the original
land documents of the housing scheme from the church officials.
Acting
spokesman of the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, confirmed receipt of the
petition, but declined further comments because the allegations are
still being investigated.
An investigation or even prosecution of
the accused may not deliver the reprieve that subscribers desperately
seek. This is because the Federal Capital Development Authority deems
the estate an illegal development and has marked it for demolition. This
development has provoked further questions on the N82 million the
pastors claimed was spent on regularising the title to the land.
As
at press time, Pastor Johnson, who had earlier been fingered in an N8
million scam at his former post in Calabar, has been released on
administrative bail. So have Imonhiosen, Adeagbo, Shobola and Mbanu.
They have been directed to report daily at the EFCC pending conclusion
of investigations.
When TheNEWS met Johnson last year, he made
light of the brewing disenchantment over the project. He said there was
no way a project of that magnitude would not feature dissension, which
he attributed to disgruntled elements.
On the refusal to refund
money to subscribers that demanded such, Johnson said he and his team
were working on giving them their money back. He pleaded that those
concerned should give him and his colleagues more time to enable them
sell off some of the remaining plots at commercial rates to raise more
money to refund.
Adeagbo, who functioned as the scheme’s legal
officer, also told this magazine last year that they received letters
from some subscribers asking for refund, but maintained that their
inability to refund just yet was not enough for some of the “disgruntled
elements” to want to tarnish the name of the church by rushing to the
press. He warned that as a lawyer, he would not hesitate to go to court
if he felt maligned in the press. He is likely to be in court–not to
fight defamation, but to answer charges of corruption.
