FOLLOWING the report on ‘How pastor who charges N310,000, keeps dozens of Nigerians in his church in preparation for ‘rapture’, additional information has emerged alleging that the pastor – Noah Abraham – divorced his wife and eloped with his choirmaster’s wife, this is in addition to other allegations.
The ICIR’s Marcus Fatunmole and Fatunbi Johnson were at Kabba on May 5 and 6 to speak with major parties to the incidents.
Read the first and the second parts here and here
Reactions from Abraham’s church members in Kabba
One of Abraham’s church members in Kabba, Oliver Eze, said the action of charging money did not start in Ekiti. Eze explained that he had asked the congregation in Kabba to pay N350,000 for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Some church members raised money to pay for the gifts.
“It was at that point I realised that the place was no longer a church, but the man was a Yahoo pastor. That was how I left the church. That one is not a pastor; he is destroying Christianity totally,” Eze stated.
An assistant pastor in the Kabba church Oluwola Joshua said Abrahma started very well but ended up derailing by giving false teaching and acting in contravention of the Bible.
Joshua who worked with Abraham for seven years said “that was why everybody began to leave the church until he collected the church member’s wife.”
Joshua was not surprised about the news of Abraham charging members money for rapture in the church in Ekiti because he started the whole thing in Kabba, he stated.
David Olorunfemi was the church’s engineer. He joined the church in 2018.
He had enjoyed Abraham’s teachings and sermons before noticing his ‘ungodly’ characters.
“The kind of doctrine he taught complicated everything. He called himself Adam, who God first created. We were managing to go along with him. At another time, he called himself David. He called himself all sorts of things in the Bible, and many of us were suspicious.
“Before long, he introduced doctrines that could easily separate families. He would accuse couples of all manners of bad things in the presence of each other. For instance, he could call a wife a witch in the presence of her husband. Before you know it, the husband would send his wife out of the home. I later decided to leave the church.”
Olorunfemi said the pastor always threatened anyone who left his church with death, causing members to panic and stay back.
“When I left, members of the church thought I would die. They would look at me amazingly that I had not died whenever they saw me on the street.”
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Another church member, Kayode Shaba, said he came to the church because he needed a child.
He said the pastor told him that his wife was a witch and was responsible for the couple’s childlessness.
He also instructed Shaba to keep the message from his wife.
Shaba told his wife what Abraham said, and they stopped going to his church.
Abraham then allegedly threatened that him (Shaba) and his wife would die after seven months, Shaba told The ICIR.
How Abraham took my wife – Choir Master
Dare Ikuenayo, also called Apostle, is the husband of Abraham’s alleged mistress. He is 42. He married his wife, Bose Oloruntoba, who now identifies as Anabel 16 years ago.
The couple had three boys and one girl.
“As we desired to serve God better, we came to the church of Noah Abraham. He was teaching us the word of God. Suddenly, he said he wanted to marry my wife. I said I didn’t see anything like that in the Bible. I told him that he was already married with children. I said I was also married with children. I wondered how such a thing could happen.
“Later on, I didn’t know how the events turned that he snatched my wife from me. We went to the police station, and they arrested him. He later moved out from here to Omuo Ekiti. I have not seen my wife and children for almost a year now.”
When asked to describe his wife, he said: “My wife is a gentle and calm lady. But she has a gift. She always sees a vision. Maybe that is what pastor Abraham saw in her that made him snatch her.”
When the reporter demanded that he react to Abraham’s wife’s allegation that his wife hypnotized Abraham, Ikuenayo denied it.
He said Abraham loved his wife because of her vision gift.
Ikuenayo approached the court over the incident. While filing a case against the pastor, he said God told him to withdraw it, adding that his wife would return to him with his children, “Every day, I expect her because I know she is coming back”.
He has no plan to remarry but to wait for his wife and children.
He explained that many of Abraham’s church members in the town didn’t know where to start their lives. “We are even confused about which church to go to. This man portrayed the character of godliness, not knowing that he had another plan.
“Now, I’m the only one in the house; a married man with four kids! One died in his church. It’s only me sleeping and waking alone and doing everything alone. It is very tough on me. I leave it for God. I know that one day, God will vindicate me.”
Abraham derailed in Kabba, says Community Chief
The community chief Ayeteju Kabba Obasanju Olanrewaju said he was shocked by reports that emerged from Abraham’s church.
He said “When this pastor came to this place, he started his work. He built the church by himself, drawing members to the church. But unfortunately, he did not belong to any Christian association in Kabba. He was not a member of CAN, the Christian Association of Nigeria. He was not also a member of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria.
“He operated the church isolatedly from the Christian community. His background, his identity, we did not know. But there came a time I heard news making the rounds in Kabba here about him. I invited him to this place.”
The chief said he invited all the parties involved and discovered the pastor had erred.
“You’re married to a wife, and you’re now telling us as a pastor that God told you that the other woman is your heavenly-ordained wife. You took her to yourself and gave another woman to the other man who lost his wife to you. So, I looked at it as hypocrisy and anti-Christian.”
He then stopped Abraham from running the church in his neighbourhood to enable him to seek God’s face for a proper direction.
Consequently, the pastor instructed his members to dismantle the church and move all his equipment to his house.
“Afterwards, someone took the matter to a paramount ruler, now a first-class titleholder, the Obajemu of Oweland. He adjudicated as such. He said such a thing could not exist or persist in Kabba Oweland because we are people of moral values and standards. That was how we evicted him from this land.
“He then took to his heels and went to Omuo-Oke Ekiti. He eventually absconded with the other man’s wife.”
The Obajemu of Owe Land, Oba Micheal Ibinaiye confirmed what the community chief told The ICIR. The Obajemu gave the final order that banished Abraham from the area.
He said, “the pastor is a devil because the way he behaved didn’t promote Christianity. All he did was against the Holy Bible. A pastor claimed his member’s wife and said God sent him. The pastor would claim the wife he snatched was his daughter. The new wife would also say the pastor was her father.
“In our culture here, I don’t know a man would marry his daughter. Whatever the man’s wife was supposed to do, the new wife would do it in the church. He even sent the wife out for the new wife to come in.
Abraham stopped my daughter from accepting three US universities’ scholarships – Church member
Oyemike Mary retired from Abuja to Kabba and attended Abraham’s church, where she was the women leader and also a founding member.
Oyemike also stood in for Abraham in the church whenever he travelled.
She claimed the pastor later ruined her daughter’s chance to school in the US on scholarships.
“There was a time my daughter had admission in three universities in the US on scholarship. As a spiritual father, I went to him. He was the one that first prophesied that the girl would study abroad.
“The man then changed and said if the girl should go, I would cry over her because they would bring her corpse back home. There is no mother that will hear that and be comfortable. How many children do I have?
“I told my husband there is nothing we can do about it. The girl cried and cried. Because of that, she left this town in 2017. It was last year that she returned home. She refused to come back to Kabba. With God’s help, she was able to return and reconcile with the family. She said she didn’t have anything to do with us anymore. She was so devastated.”
Oyemike said she eventually left the church in 2020 when Abraham persistently preached against the Bible some of which include that members must not visit their parents because they would fail in life, members should not buy a car before the pastor has purchased two vehicles as well as discouraging members from helping the needy.
“There was a time he said it in one of his messages that nobody would buy a car in that church. He said he placed an embargo on his church members from buying cars until he bought his own. It was when he purchased two cars that he lifted the ban.
“We came here with two buses and a car. Everything went down the drain,” Oyemike said.
When The ICIR published the first part, a reader with the name Alice left a comment saying that Abraham stopped her from attending countless schools abroad. She turned out to be Oyemike’s daughter.
Abraham fails to respond to The ICIR’s request
Consequent findings differed from what Abraham and Anabel had told the reporter, in the initial interview. As such The ICIR made multiple attempts in the last six days to get Abraham to respond to the discrepancies and allegations but all efforts were unsuccessful.
In Ekiti Anabel gave the reporter a number to reach the pastor which has not been reachable. Furthermore, he did not respond to the messages or calls sent to his Whatsapp and his other phone number, despite confirmation that he received the messages.
The number on Trucaller shows the name “Past Abraham”.
Meanwhile, the police in Ekiti have arraigned him for an offence they say contravened section 416 of the Criminal Law of Ekiti State, 2012. Read the report here.
Marcus bears the light, and he beams it everywhere. He's a good governance and decent society advocate. He's The ICIR Reporter of the Year 2022 and has been the organisation's News Editor since September 2022. Contact him via email @ [email protected].