Popular Nigerian church sacks pastor for participating in MMM with church’s account

The leadership of Omega Fire Ministries, OFM, Worldwide, led by Johnson Suleman, has sacked one of its pastors, Joseph Aiyedun.

The cleric was relieved of his duties after it was revealed that he used the ministry’s name and bank account to register for money doubling scheme, Mavrodi Mundial Movement, MMM.

The church’s head of administration, David Apelorioye, made this known in a statement.

A controversial cleric, Mr. Suleman, an apostle, is best remembered for the infamous ‘death sentence’ he pronounced on the Kaduna State Governor last year.

Speaking during a service in 2016, Mr. Suleman condemned the MMM scheme, and described it as demonic and satanic. He also said participants need prayers.

The statement from the church reads:

“The management of Omega Fire Ministries Worldwide is using this medium to react to news making the rounds on social media regarding one of its pastors who used the ministry’s name to register for the MMM scheme.

“Ordinarily, the church would not have reacted to the story because of falsehoods being published regularly by some blogs and news websites whose credibility are questionable.

But after a thorough investigation by the church authority, it was established that one of our branch pastors in Aba, Pastor Joseph Aiyedun, indeed participated in the scheme.

“The church authority decided to expel Pastor Aiyedun not because he registered for the ponzi scheme but because he involved the ministry’s name in the satanic adventure. And we discovered that he was able to use the ministry’s name because he had access to the account of his branch which itself is against the church’s guidelines and a fraud likely to have been carried out in connivance with the branch’s account department. We are still investigating further to unravel the whole activities.

“Of the OFM’s 200 churches in Nigeria alone and its 800 branches in 51 nations of the world, it is possible for any of the pastors to go astray and be corrected. In fact, we discovered that Pastor Aiyedun, including some other members of OFM, did the scheme before our father, Apostle Johnson Suleman, made the warning last year against MMM, but Pastor Aiyedun was fired because he did it with the ministry’s name as the OFM rules forbid any of its pastors access to the account except people in the account department.”