The £93 million African pastor exploiting UK followers
One of Nigeria’s wealthiest preachers David Oyedepo is being accused of ‘cynical exploitation’ after a British newspaper the Daily Mail ran an article alleging his Winners’ Chapel movement “received £16.7 million in donations from followers who were told that God would give them riches in return.”
Oyedepo with an estimated £93 million fortune, a fleet of private jets and a Rolls-Royce Phantom ensures “followers are ferried in double-decker shuttle buses to the church, handed slips inviting them to make debit card payments and told obeying the ministry’s teachings will make them immune from illness.”
Winners’ Chapel is part of a worldwide empire of evangelical ministries run by Oyedepo. Dubbed ‘The Pastorpreneur’, he was accused earlier this year of slapping the face of a young woman he said was a witch. The assault case was struck out but is being appealed.
Branches of the church have sprung up in major UK cities in a huge recruitment drive centred on Mr Oyedepo’s ‘prosperity gospel’. This claims that congregants who make regular donations and pay tithes – a ten per cent levy on their income – will be rewarded financially by God.
Followers are urged to target vulnerable people such as the lonely, the sick, the homeless and the suicidal as potential candidates for conversion. Labour MP Paul Flynn said Winners’ Chapel “are making clearly spurious claims and it seems to be a cynical exploitation of the gullible,’ he said.
Donations to the ministry in England almost doubled from £2.21 million to £4.37 million between 2006 and 2010. Mr Oyedepo’s superchurch in Nigeria received £794,000 or 73 per cent of the charitable donations paid out by the British Winners’ Chapel between 2007 and 2010.
This was despite claims in Africa that he is enriching himself at the expense of his devotees. The registered charity has spent £6.81 million on evangelism and ‘praise, worship and fellowship’. The church’s ‘Joseph Squad’ preaches in British prisons and has a weekly broadcast named ‘Liberation Hour’ on satellite and cable TV.
