An Elder of the City of David Parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Quincy Olasumbo Ayodele, has revealed that a former Pastor of the parish, Idowu Iluyomade, did not just abandon the church but was told after serving his three-month suspension not to step into the RCCG again.
The Elder, in an interview with On Air Personality, Daddy Freeze, on Monday said the directive to Iluyomade was contained in a letter.
In a 45 minutes interview monitored by Church Times, Ayodele, a Nigerian herbal medicine practitioner, entrepreneur, herbal slimming, and skin care expert; Chief Executive Officer of Quincy Herbals, a Nigerian leading herbal healthcare centre; and a consultant to the World Health Organization, spoke extensively on the Iluyomade saga.
She said it was not true that Pastor Iluyomade rebelled against the RCCG before starting his own church, The Family Fellowship.
She said contrary to the insinuation, he served his three-month suspension and had expected that he would be restored to the City of David or any other parish only to be given a letter not to step into the premises of the church again.
She also denied the report that the late Chief Executive Officer of Access Holdings, Herbert Wigwe, was the highest contributor to the building of the Trinity Towers of the City of David.
According to her, many people contributed to the building of the tower and some gave as much as Wigwe gave.
She said many were as committed to the church as he was, citing examples of how people supported projects at the prompting of Pastor Iluyomade.
She said Iluyomade did a lot for both the RCCG and the General Overseer of the Church, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, wondering what could have led to the action of the church against him.
She gave examples of free schools that were built by Pastor Iluyomade, how he fed the hungry every week, and impacted the larger society using church funds.
Ayodele, who said she is an insider in the City of David, told Daddy Freeze that she was not around during the controversial party that supposedly led to the suspension of the Iluyomades.
She said however that the party has been planned before the death of Wigwe and that the aso ebi (family cloth) that was taken for the event was sent to Pastor Folu Adeboye.
While noting that the suspension of Iluyomade was a good step to douse public anger against the church, she expressed deep concern on why he was banned from the church despite serving his punishment.
She said she was always going with Pastor Iluyomade to the headquarters of the RCCG in Ebute Meta for the three months that he served the punishment, adding: “We were expecting that after the three months, he would be restored to City of David, but to our surprise, we were told he was given a letter not to step into the church.”
Ayodele said they had expected that the church would post him to another parish, adding: “But that was not the case.
“What we heard was that he was given a letter that he must not step into the City of David.”
She expressed concern about the action of the RCCG, saying: “Pastor Adeboye and Pastor Iluyomade were like father and son.
“They are so close.
“There is nothing Adeboye wanted that Iluyomade would not go out of his way to make available.”
While insisting that Iluyomade did not rebel against the church. Ayodele said: “He was told not to enter the City of David.
“Why they did that is only known to our daddy, Governing Council and God.
“I cannot answer why.
“But we are curious.”
She said some elders in the church had to step in when it was clear that Iluyomade was stopped from entering the church.
The concerned elders, according to Ayodele, wrote letters of appeal to Pastor Adeboye and began to plead with him not to take such drastic action against Iluyomade.
They wrote letters and penned their names on it, but there was no response from Pastor Adeboye, she told Daddy Freeze.
She said the next step the Iluyomades took was to start going to Kings Court, another RCCG Parish that Iluyomade pioneered many years ago.
She said: “The pastor in the church welcomed them and accorded then the honour of the founding pastors only to be told later that they should not be accommodated.”
Making reference to the parable of the lost sheep, she said: “Pastor.Adeboye taught us that if one sheep is missing out of 100, Jesus would go after the lost sheep.
“I was now asking: ‘Will he now allow Iluyomade to be lost to the world?’”
Ayodele, who disclosed she has been in RCCG for about 32 years, said she had to be on the trail of Pastor Iluyomade to bring him back to the church.
She said she has been so involved with the RCCG to the point of building many parishes for the church with personal funds.
She said: “I have brought many people to RCCG.
“The whole of my family, including my husband and children, usually put money together to build parishes.
“There is one we built in my village that is now the provincial headquarters.
“We are church planters.
“That is our calling.
“And it is not that we plant and start going back there to ask for tithe and offering.
“No.
“We plant and we move on.”
On the efforts to persuade Pastor Adeboye to change his mind about the expulsion of Pastor Iluyomade, Church Times quoted Ayodele as having said many prominent Nigerians were contacted to beg him to no avail.
She said: “They went to beg him and he said he (Iluyomade) was paying a loan.
“But he has been paying the loan without coming to ask for money from you.
“So why don’t you leave him and let him finish paying the loan?
“He said it’s okay, he will let him come back.
“He did not.
“Other people went to beg him rolling on the floor and asking for his forgiveness.
“He did not.”
Asked if the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria intervened in the matter, Ayodle said: “Who will talk to him if God has not talked to him?
“My daddy hears from God.
“It is what God says that he tells us and we believe him.
“He will say my daddy says and we believe him.”
Ayodele said Pastor Iluyomade never planned to start a church.
She said: “He does not even know how to start a church.
“He was an Anglican before he joined RCCG.
“His father was a reverend.
“He had left Anglican for almost 32 years.
“If he goes back to Anglican, where is he going to start from?”
Ayodele disclosed that the people the Iluyomades were helping abandoned them in their moment of trial.
Church Times quoted her as having said: “I can tell you that.
“They were not even praying for him in the City of David that he left.
“That was what made me go to him.
“When I got to him, he was weeping, telling me that he was told not to step into the church.”
Ayodele said she was moved to tears when Pastor Adeboye said during his visit to the City of David on March 30 that those who left the church were demons and that demons built trinity towers.
She said: “I started wondering, is this my daddy that is talking?
“What is going on?”
The herbal medicine practitioner said she did not follow Iluyomade when he started his church because she believed the matter could still be resolved and that she was playing a mediation role.
Ayodele said it was people in Pastor Iluyomade’s neighbourhood that came to meet him for prayers because they knew he is a pastor, adding: “So he was praying for them and fellowshipping with them.
“That was how the church started.
“He never planned to start a church.”
The WHO Consultant said if she had the grace of meeting Pastor Adeboye, she would plead with him frantically and appeal to him to forgive Pastor Iluyomade.
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