BREAKING: Top Political, Religious Leaders In War Over Lauretta and Oyedepo’s Clash

The clash between Lauretta Onochie, a presidential aide and Bishop Oyedepo of Living Faith Church Over the New CAMA Law has further stirred up debates and disputes among top political and Religious in Nigerians.

The provisions of this Law as it pertains to religious bodies pose agitations since Nigeria is made up of people of diverse religions, basically Muslims and Christians in which, anything relating to religion in Nigeria is considered sensitive.

Apparently, the provisions of this new law seek to regulate the activities of religious bodies and other associations. Section 839 provides that the Corporate Affairs Commission (“CAC”) may by order, suspend the trustees of an association or a religious body and appoint an interim manager(s) to coordinate its affairs, where there has been misconduct or mismanagement of properties of the association or religious body for the interest of the public.

Looking deeply into this, it’s a clear case of lack of trust in government, fear of exploitations, suppression and mismanagement of funds and properties.

Reacting to this, Bishop David Oyedepo questioned the rationale behind the inclusion of religious centres and charity organisations into the Company and Allied Matters Acts (CAMA). According the Bishop, the church works on the pattern delivered by God not the pattern of man. The government has no power to appoint people over churches. 

Responding to the statement made by the Oyedepo, the Lauretta Onochie, a Presidential aide through her twitter handle said, “I hope this is not true. If it is, Oyedepo will have to manufacture his own country and live by his own laws” adding that “as long as he lives and operates within the entity called Nigeria, he will live by Nigerian rules and laws, he will do as he’s told by the law”. “Enough of lawlessness!” She further stated

This clash of disagreement between these two top leaders has further generated a lot of war of words among top Nigeria political and religious leaders including the average members of the public.

Dr. Charles Omole, a lawyer and political strategies has responded to the issue maintaining that the controversy over the new CAMA Law is unnecessary, as most of the provisions are standard practice in many nations, but the lack of trust in government has made folks suspicious of anything that seems to give government more powers, due to the culture of abuse, overreach by government.

On the other hand, Primate Elijah Ayodele, the leader of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church who described this act as a means of fighting the church, saying it is a strategy the government employed to meddling with church affairs, which is totally unacceptable by him,
He said: “Nobody can shut down my account. No one can can get a trustee for me. The government needs to be cautioned. They don’t have any thing to do with the church. It’s not the government that brought land for me. They didn’t do evangelism for me. They didn’t build for me.”

“They are just jokers” he asserted.

From voice-pop gathered by GGB reporters concerning this issue, some Nigerians are of the view that “a secular person can’t interpret how a religious organisation conducts its activities when he does not even understands it” Itobi Gideon Opined. Ani Precious asked “can you entrust a muslim to the affairs of a mega church? or can you entrust a christian to the affairs of a central mosque? In a state like kaduna, can you entrust the affairs of the church to anti christian government?” adding that “we need to be careful with this act before we open a pandora boxs”.

Reactions from Twitter users as gathered by GGB reporters are shown below;

By Chinenye Gertrude