According to a statement signed by Pastor David Apelorioye, the head of admin at OFM, Pastor Joseph Aiyedun, who is in charge of one the OFM branches in Aba, Abia State, was fired for participating in the Mavrodi Mondial Movement (MMM), a ponzi scheme widely acclaimed to be a satanic venture.
It should be recalled that the founder and president of the OFM, Apostle Johnson Suleman, at a church service in November 2016, warned members of his congregation against involving in MMM, calling it 'demonic'.
The statement from the church reads thus; "The management of Omega Fire Ministries Worldwide is using this medium to react to a news making the rounds on the social media regarding one of his 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 statement adds that the erring pastor was sacked after a thorough investigation and it was discovered that he used the name of the church to register for MMM, thereby denting the ministry's image in the public eye. It was gathered that the erring pastor would have just been disciplined in line with the church rules if he had registered for the scheme in his personal capacity but because he used the ministry's name for the scheme, he was asked to go.
"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."
The statement therefore appeals to the general public to disregard any news being passed around about Omega Fire Ministries involving in the MMM scheme or any scheme of its kind because it is not true.
"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."
It was gathered that to enable him look after his family whilst he searches for other things to do in life, the church paid the sacked pastor a full one year salary ahead on the instruction of Apostle Suleman who was not available for comments at press time.
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