* Plus the Foursquare Gospel Church connection
The Board of Trustees of a Lagos based Church, Embrace International
Assembly has called on the Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Kpotum
Idris, to call off the police men who for four weeks, arrived at their
church premises on 89/93 Obafemi Awolowo road, Ikorodu, to prevent the
church members from worshipping in their church premises.
The members of the church board which included Segun Oluwadoroni,
Adebayo Adio, Lateef Olasupo Olaleye and Tunde Amokade, declared that the presence of the police at their church premise, is disturbing the church and preventing them from holding and having peaceful satisfying assembly on their property at Ikorodu. They thus called on the Inspector of Police to restrain the policemen who are currently occupying their church premises on a twenty four hour, seven days basis, to leave, in order to enable them enjoy their freedom of
worship.
Segun Oluwadoroni who spoke for the church board at a press conference
in Lagos, spoke bitterly of how the police had arrived at their church four weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, and stopped all the members of the church from entering into the church premises, to hold their normal sunday morning service. "It was like a nightmare for us that day as we were hurdled out and we had to hold the sunday morning service in the rain, after hurriedly renting canopies."
We immediately took the matter to the Lagos State Police Command, wrote a formal letter to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police Mr. Cornelius Aderanti who unfortunately, has not acknowledged our letter, not to talk of him calling us for a meeting. We consider this police siege with policemen wielding guns to prevent us from our property as illegal illegal, as we have not as a church constituted ourselves to warrant such a siege."
Lamenting the financial cost so far for the church, Oluwadoroni said, "since the policemen arrived on our premises four weeks ago, we have been holding our regular mid week services under canopies outside our usual church building, and the regular sunday church services, at a different location, where we have to pay heavily for an event centre that adequately contains our large congregation."
Asked what could be the reason the police decided to take over theirchurch premises, Oluwadoroni said, "it may be as a result of the issue that our head Pastor who is a former Pastor of Foursquare Gospel Church has with the church. Now, we want to state that whatever issue our head pastor has with Foursquare Gospel Church is between him and that church. It has nothing to do with Embrace International Assembly which is our church. When the former Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni was here in Lagos, something like this came up and the former Lagos State Commissioner of Police invited both our church board and Foursquare Gospel Church and settled the matter calling for peace to be allowed to reign while awaiting the determination of the cases between our head pastor and Foursquare Church to be determined by the court. But not long after he left, and this new police commissioner arrived, policemen swoop over our premises and sack us from our property. The church compound is our property, we as a church paid for every aspect of the property and want to enjoy the use of our property."
Meanwhile, the church according to Oluwadoroni is not deterred by the intimidation and harassment so far as the whole situation has continued to increased the membership of the church. He said that, "if all this show of might is to reduce our church membership, by which ever power is troubling our church and resisting us from our right to worship on our property, then it has failed. That is because our church membership has continued to grow in number. The sympathy we are even getting from the church neighbourhood is enormous. This have even attracted more memo,beers to us. They think that putting men on our church premises will scatter the conjuration, but unfortunately for them, we are fast increasing in number. And we are presently warming up for our annual Good Friday event which is usually the biggest church event that usually takes place in Ikorodu. Even the present leadership of Foursquare Gospel Church have come to this our annual event in time past.
No comments:
Post a Comment