Church leadership threatens to expel “deviant members” over Sapele Anglican Church crisis

The church authority of Sapele Diocese, Anglican Communion, has issued an official statement following the endless crisis rocking the ministry, warning that “all deviant members and clergy in the church must turn a new leaf or stand expelled from the church”.

In a statement signed by the National Secretary of the church, Ven. Stephen Ayodeji Faghemi, the affected church members and clergy running into several hundred, who have been carrying out regular peaceful protests against the authority for two years now, are said to be by necessary implication lost the right to belong to the church”.

The statement dated March 26, 2017, a copy made of which was made available to our reporter, also said that the protesting members and some clergy have “chosen to walk away from the Anglican Church, as they cannot submit to its authority”, adding that the clergymen who have followed this group “are in danger of losing their ministry in the Anglican Church”.

The protesting members who spoke through the church’s cathedral warding, Mr. Ohenero Onojoroevwo, said, “The protest is to draw the attention of the world to several ungodly activities going on in the church, which include the whereabouts of over N800m accruing to the church for a period of eight years”.

They also said, “we have discovered gross financial misappropriation of the church’s funds and the authority has done nothing to uncover the looting going on in the church”, adding that the bishop’s high handedness in the church, his style of administration and how he places curses on the elders of the church can no longer be tolerated by the members and other clergymen”.

They insist that, “The church system is characterized by tyranny and impunity”, adding that, “In the last two years of the crisis, the population strength of the church has reduced from 2000 which it had in 2009, to less than 200 and members who felt that the presiding bishop should be changed and we have been worshiping under canopies outside the gate”.

It would be recalled that crisis rocking Sapele Anglican Church had deepened in the past three years with members of the church demanding the removal of the Bishop in charge, Bishop Efakerha.

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